Pioneer Communities: The Quantified Self and Maker Movement as Collective Actors of Deep Mediatization

在过去的十年里，作为社会运动和智库的混合体的集体团体的兴起，努力塑造媒体、文化和社会交织在一起的变化：先锋社区。基于特定的集体形式，他们在媒体发展和媒体的日常使用之间架起一座桥梁，促进技术变革。目前的典型例子是量化自我运动和创客运动。该项目的目的是对德国和英国这两个先锋社区如何在不断变化的媒体环境中得以实现进行比较调查，以及他们如何同时推动媒体环境的变化，他们对媒体相关集体和社会转型的想象和实践概念，以及围绕他们的公共话语。量化自我和创客先锋社区建立了复杂的跨国和跨文化网络，以支持他们想要建立的基于技术的想象集体概念：与自我的数字化实践和制造业的数字化实践相关的集体。先锋社区的特点是一种显著的张力：尽管它们（至少在其核心）是紧密交织在一起的社区，具有强烈的归属感和权力关系概念，但它们通过更加开放的公共话语，对集体建设和社会转型展开了社会影响。因此，这不是他们与媒体有关的集体和社会转型的想象概念的单向扩散，而是一个复杂的传播技术和新闻报道的过程，这些技术和新闻报道为他们的影响力奠定了基础。该项目将从三个层面进行调查。首先，比较重构两个先锋社区的交往形态及其权力关系。其次，它将调查他们想象的媒体相关的集体和社会转型的概念。从他们自己的角度来看，先锋社区在这方面的观念是可能转变的蓝图。第三，它调查了围绕这些先锋社区的公共话语，并将这些发现与他们自己的结构和概念进行了比较。在方法上，分析是基于先驱社区的媒体人种志（包括分类方法，以及爬虫和定性网络分析），对他们想象的集体和社会转型概念的定性内容分析，以及对他们收到的印刷，电视和在线媒体报道的纵向定性内容分析。这项研究将主要在德国和英国进行，重点放在柏林和伦敦这两个主要的欧洲先锋社区中心。作为进一步的背景，研究了美国旧金山湾区的先驱社区的起源和欧洲的重要事件。

The past decade has seen the rise of collectivities that act as hybrids of social movements and think tanks and strive to shape the intertwined change of media, culture and society: pioneer communities. Based on particular forms of collectivity, they build a bridge between media development and the everyday use of media and promote technological changes. Distinctive present examples are the Quantified Self and Maker movements. The aim of the project is to conduct a comparative investigation of how the changing media environment enables these two pioneer communities in Germany and the UK, and how at the same time the change of the media environment is advanced by them, their imagined and practiced concepts of media-related collectivity and societal transformation, as well as the public discourse surrounding them. The Quantified Self and Maker pioneer communities build complex transnational and transcultural networks that support the technology-based imagined concepts of collectivity they want to establish: collectivities related to digital practices of the self and digital practices of manufacturing. Pioneer communities are characterised by a remarkable tension: While they are - at least at their core - closely interwoven communities with strong concepts of belonging and power-relations, they unfold their social influence on collectivity building and societal transformation additionally via a much more open public discourse. Therefore, it is less a unidirectional diffusion of their media-related imagined concepts of collectivity and societal transformation but rather a complicated process of spreading technologies and journalistic coverage that builds the basis of their influence. The project will investigate this on three levels. First, it aims to reconstruct comparatively the communicative figurations of the two pioneer communities and their power-relations. Second, it will investigate their imagined concepts of media-related collectivity and societal transformation. In their very own perspective, the pioneer communities' conceptions in this respect are blueprints of possible transformation. Third, it investigates the public discourse surrounding these pioneer communities and compares the findings with their own structures and conceptions. Methodologically, the analysis is based on a media ethnography of the pioneer communities (including sorting methods, as well as crawler and qualitative network analysis), a qualitative content analysis of their imagined concepts of collectivity and societal transformation, and a longitudinal qualitative content analysis of the print, television and online media coverage they receive. The research will be conducted mainly in Germany and the UK with a focus on Berlin and London as two main European hubs for pioneer communities. As a further context of this, the origins of the pioneer communities in the US San Francisco Bay Area and important events in Europe are investigated.