Besides giving an overview on the individual contributions, this introduction to the special issue on transparency delineates a conceptual context for a critical analysis of the contemporary discourse on transparency and the media mechanisms related to it. It focuses on three ambivalences inherent to transparency: (a) The Enlightenment and modernity promise transparency and at the same time produce a structural complexity undermining all simple endeavors to make things visible. (b) Transparency, therefore, is never given but is based on artificial representational and mediatic strategies; the processes of mediation, however, applied to produce and display transparency, attract suspicion for being selective and manipulative. (c) Transparency is often equated with the possibility of a critical public while the practice of critique (according to scholars as different as Latour, Serres, Rancière, and Boltanski) has become toothless in its redundant claim to disclose what other people do not see. Instead of just ridiculing the notion of transparency, we argue in conclusion that any call for transparency should always be accompanied with a careful examination and possible contention of why to disclose this (and not something else) and why with these tools (and not others).

This article considers the cross-media dynamics related to controversies surrounding the Tour de France 2017. It posits sports controversies are prime cases for studying how mainstream media and online platforms impact each other. Based on a large data set of tweets and combining a digital methods approach with a close reading of tweets, we show how the often discussed potential of sports’ live events to synchronize different media becomes intensified in case of controversies, which trigger an influx of users and spawn additional moments of shared attention. Additionally, controversies in sports incite visual activities of fans using and augmenting material from different sources to support their take on the issue. We suggest to understand this as an example of ‘forensic fandom’ and show how it entangles different temporal and visual affordances: the liveness of television, the ad hoc publics of Twitter and the archival function of YouTube. Adding to prior cross-media and cross-platform research, we argue that media (including their seemingly specific temporal and visual qualities) are always dependent on and shaped by particular cultural practices, topics and events that trigger connections between different media and platforms.

No abstract

No abstract