Connected Audiences in Social Performance

Abstract

Previous accounts of social performance have examined the difficulties associated with multiple audiences, but few describe situations in which a performer’s audiences are not only multiple but are also connected in ways that mean the reaction of one audience will influence that of the other. I lay out the necessary conditions for audiences to be considered connected, the potential configurations of connected audiences, and the challenges for performative success that come with such configurations. I argue that some performance structures are increasingly central to civil engagement as groups become less likely to interact but more likely to virtually observe one another and that conceptualizing these performances is essential to understanding recent political events in pluralistic societies.

Power in modernity: a discussion among Mark Haugaard, Clarissa Hayward, and Jonathan G. Heaney ofPower in Modernity: agency relations and the creative destruction of the King’s two bodies, by Isaac Ariail Reed, with a reply by Isaac Reed

“…I agree that the performance was (partially) decentralized in the specific sense that the crowd at Trump's rally in advance of the storming of the capital was also performing, and indeed that a kind of emergent format of call-and-response was part of the generation of energy that became the motivation to use force as itself a performance. This recalls several recent papers in the sociology of performance that emphasize audience responses and performances as themselves a space of variation (Taylor 2021, Malacarne 2021. These relationships between rectors and actors-turned-agents often have a dimension of give and takepower is dependent upon its dependents, and thus there is often a concern with the 'rules for ruling' that runs parallel to immediate agency problems and various efforts to accomplish clear and limited projects.…”

Ritual pathways and dramaturgical efforts: Negotiating the meaning of organized play in Norwegian children's sports

“…I have exposed ritual-like meaning-making as demanding of our dramaturgical effort to bring meanings and action together on the pathways of the cult. To reach a collaborative sequence of action (Fine and Corte, 2017) we must perpetually work through enactments and voices expressing different viewpoints (Hartmann et al, 2022;Malacarne, 2021;Smith, 2008;Spillman, 2020). Macro-cultural codes must be collaboratively worked into micro scripts (DeLand, 2018;Fine, 1987Fine, , 2015Geertz, 1973;Jijon, 2015;Klima, 2022) in ways deepening our emotions and fueling us with the energy to realize ourselves within the encounter (Collins, 2004;Corte, 2022;DeLand, 2022).…”

Performative polarization: The interactional and cultural drivers of political antagonism

“…Figure 1 Spiral of performative success (Taylor 2022: 72) Far from arbitrating performative failure, however, for the rise and performative success of politicians like Trump and populist leaders in European and Latin American countries defusion seemed instrumental. Malacarne's (2021) important distinction between target and secondary audience, whose respective response is shaped by the others' response to the same performance, helps explain this. Though there are certainly more intricate links between audiences, explicitly divisive dramatic acts in settings preconfigured by past conflict invoke inversely related responses: if one approves, the other disapproves.…”

“…The adapted model accounts for connections between affirmative and oppositional counter-performances of polarized audiences and can be envisioned as inverse spirals whose arcs are linked to one another (see Fig. 2)-representing the negatively associated but connected audiences who respond to one another (Malacarne 2021). The shared negative sentiment towards the performance and ensuing counterperformances by extension fuses the adversarial audience with their preferred performers.…”