Alison Hearn

Western University Canada, Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS), Faculty Member

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Papers by Alison Hearn

Outside the Lines

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Jan 16, 1997

Variations on the branded self: Theme, invention, improvisation and inventory

Participations: Dialogues on the Participatory Promise of Contemporary Culture and Politics PART 2: LABOR

Changing forms of information production and circulation must have some implications for the divi... more Changing forms of information production and circulation must have some implications for the division of labor. Some see new spaces of positive social and political potential, whereas others see new forms of labor exploitation. Can we formulate any common ground that would advance the debate? Is unrewarded labor ever good? Are we in the middle of a genuine rethinking of what constitutes labor (as opposed to free creative activity)? How do questions of labor connect with changing regimes of temporality? Do we have a basic need for free time and unconstrained activity, and, if we do, how is this consistent with digital developments? Should we care if our activities generate profitable data for others, and, if so, why? brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk

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The Beguiling: Glamour in/as Platformed Cultural Production

Social media and society, 2020

Arguing that questions of power expressed through aesthetic form are too often left out of curren... more Arguing that questions of power expressed through aesthetic form are too often left out of current approaches to digital culture, this article revives the modernist aesthetic category of glamour in order to analyze contemporary forms of platformed cultural production. Through a case study of popular feminism, the article traces the ways in which glamour, defined as a beguiling affective force linked to promotional capitalist logics, suffuses digital content, metrics, and platforms. From the formal aesthetic codes of the ubiquitous beauty and lifestyle Instagram feeds that perpetuate the beguiling promise of popular feminism, to the enticing simplicity of online metrics and scores that promise transformative social connection and approbation, to the political economic drive for total information awareness and concomitant disciplining, predicting and optimizing of consumer-citizens, the article argues that the ambivalent aesthetic of glamour provides an apt descriptor and compelling heuristic for digital cultural production today.

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From Celebrity to Influencer: Tracing the Diffusion of Celebrity Value across the Data Stream

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. eBooks, Oct 30, 2015

While several critics have analyzed the rise of the “micro-celebrity” in the online era (Senft 20... more While several critics have analyzed the rise of the “micro-celebrity” in the online era (Senft 2008, Marwick 2013, Marwick and boyd 2011, van Dijk 2013), few have worked to historicize these developments, or to situate them within broader political economic transformations in the nature of work and value in the contemporary moment. Assessments of “micro-celebrity” also tend to ignore the central role played by celebrity/brand measurement mechanisms, such as the Nielsen ratings or the Q score, in and through which celebrity value is identified and determined. This paper will attempt to fill these gaps by providing an historical sketch of expressions of celebrity value: as product, industry, property, endorser and brand in the 20th century. It will trace these processes as they appear in the phenomenon of the reality television participant in the 1990s and 2000s and the Internet micro-celebrity, specifically the social media &#39;influencer&#39; (SMI), in the 21rst century. The paper then focuses on contemporary ‘influence’ measurement metrics, such as Klout, examining the ways in which both the traditional celebrity and the SMI have responded to and been conditioned by these metrics. Finally, the paper will critically assess how and in what ways celebrity value may have changed, and who really benefits from the dispersal of the logics of celebrity value-production in the age of social media.

Insecure: Narratives and economies of the branded self in transformation television

Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Aug 1, 2008

In a world marked by deepening political, economic, cultural and environmental insecurity, it is ... more

Confidence man: Breaking the spell of Trump the brand

Soundings: a journal of politics and culture, 2017

I n the days following Donald Trump’s election, I found myself sporadically weeping. I teared up ... more I n the days following Donald Trump’s election, I found myself sporadically weeping. I teared up while speaking in front of a room full of students. I wept at the grocery store and at the doctor’s office. My emotional reaction seemed extreme. But then friends told me that they too had had unaccountable emotional responses to the election tears, shaking, insomnia. After the first six months of Trump’s administration, the tears have been replaced by a terrifying kind of vertigo for many of us, induced by a dizzying array of racist and sexist appointments, postures and policies and a steady barrage of self-aggrandising lies, incompetence, petulance, baseless accusations, wastefulness and self indulgence, as well as the certain knowledge that, behind it all, there is just ... nothing. In hindsight it’s become clear that the extreme and visceral responses to Trump’s election were, quite simply, the symptoms of whatever faith we had left in electoral politics being fully and finally shattered. Trump’s election severed us entirely from any flimsy pretence, conscious or unconscious, that traditional politics still matters. The (neo)liberal democratic experiment in the United States has failed, as it is failing in Europe and Canada. Polite company refers to it as a ‘democratic deficit’, but we all know the truth. After Trump, all bets are off.

The collateralized personality: creditability and resistance in the age of automated credit-scoring and lending

Cultural Studies, Mar 21, 2022

“Sentimental ‘Greenbacks’ of Civilization”

Routledge eBooks, Jan 25, 2023

1. Brand Me “Activist”

New York University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

Interdisciplinarity/Extradisciplinarity: On the University and the Active Pursuit of Community

History of Intellectual Culture, 2003

This paper explores a defining contradiction at the heart of the university as a social and cultu... more This paper explores a defining contradiction at the heart of the university as a social and cultural institution: society requires the university to serve it, but this service requires the university's detachment and freedom from external social determinations. I argue that we can see this paradox embedded at the very heart of the university expressed in a myriad of ways throughout the institution's long history, including the relatively recent debates about interdisciplinarity. I review some instances in the history of the university where this contradiction has expressed itself most clearly and then examine some of the ways in which the rubric "interdisciplinarity" has been deployed in the contemporary corporate university. How is the term used? Who uses it and for what reasons? How might we come to understand "interdisciplinarity" as a performative term representing or promising one set of meanings, but instantiating a very different set of actions? What are the political dimensions of its use? I highlight and problematize the distinction between the emergence of "interdisciplinarity" as an intellectual phenomenon and "interdisciplinarity" as it is currently defined and administered within academic institutions. Finally, I explore an alternative way to think about what we do at the university in the name of interdisciplinarity.

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Producing “Reality”

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. eBooks, Jan 13, 2014

Reality Television, The Hills and the Limits of the Immaterial Labour Thesis

TripleC, May 20, 2010

This paper will examine the immaterial labour thesis as proposed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Neg... more This paper will examine the immaterial labour thesis as proposed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri through a case study of reality television production practices, specifically those of the MTV program, The Hills. Because immaterial labour is rooted in individual intelligence, affect, and social communicative capacities, Hardt and Negri contend that economic value in the form of labour power can no longer be adequately measured and quantified and that this immeasurability contains revolutionary potential. But, given the current global economic meltdown, and the persistent and very material suffering of people all over the globe, how legitimate and responsible are these claims? Drawing from interviews with reality television workers and the work of George Caffentzis, Massimo de Angelis, David Harvie and others, this paper will test the limits of the immaterial labour thesis, arguing that, rather than disappearing, capital continues to impose measurement systems to determine socially necessary labour time no matter how diffuse or social that labour might be, and that this imposition continues to produce the alienation and exploitation of many for the benefit of a few.

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Confidence man

Soundings, Aug 15, 2017

“Into Human Flesh and the Human Heart”: On Promotionalism and the Long Con of Fintech Credit-Scoring

Topia: The Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Oct 1, 2022

Fintech start-ups, such as Zest AI and LenddoEFL, promise enhanced levels of financial inclusion ... more Fintech start-ups, such as Zest AI and LenddoEFL, promise enhanced levels of financial inclusion via the creation of “re-socialized” credit profiles derived from accessing clients’ online banking habits and social media accounts. As our social data becomes credit data, the performance of “appropriate” online selfhood can now, quite literally, become money. This article explores the reputational demands, disciplines, and contradictions of ostensibly alternative computational/platformed credit scoring. It argues that the world of “surveillance capitalism” involves the maintenance of a relentlessly promotional value chain. As we are summoned to assiduously self-promote online in pursuit of a creditable reputation and financial inclusion, the self-reflexive promotional logics of the platforms themselves work to remake the world in their own image, paradoxically undermining the productive economic assumptions upon which they are predicated.

Confessions of a Radical Eclectic

Journal of Communication Inquiry, Aug 8, 2011

This paper explores the contributions of autonomist Marxist theory to my understanding of reality... more This paper explores the contributions of autonomist Marxist theory to my understanding of reality television, self-branding and social media. Autonomist Marxist ideas help to bridge the classic media studies divide between critical political economy and cultural studies, illuminating the very material connections between television’s mode of production, its texts, and its broader cultural context and impact. Concepts such as the social factory, immaterial labour, the socialized worker, and virtuosity, contributed by thinkers such as Mauricio Lazzarato, Paolo Virno, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, have enabled me to argue that reality television is a privileged site of production in the post-Fordist era; it not only produces texts or ideologies about work and life, but also models the monetization of “being” and produces “branded selves”. While autonomist ideas are extremely useful, the field of thinking is complex and not without its internal debates. This paper also explores contributions by George Caffentzis, Massimo de Angelis and David Harvie, specifically the concept of the war over measure, arguing that this concept helps to frame some of the ways in which the public expression of opinion and feeling online and in social media are being captured, measured and put to work for capital.

5070: Digital Reputation, Representation, and New Forms of Value?

Blogging, twittering, facebooking, posting videos on youtube, providing feedback on newspaper art... more