Publicity and Transparency

Abstract

Publicity and transparency are two foundational ideas about the proper structure of democratic communication. In a context of utterly transformed public discourse, it is time to rethink the value of these concepts and especially their relationship to one another. This special issue aims to test prevailing assumptions about these terms as they are reshaped in the present era of organized promotional culture. To begin, the present introduction recasts the concepts of publicity and transparency as tools for analyzing and organizing communicative power rather than as normative ideals in their own right. To this end, we present three core arguments for rethinking transparency and publicity today. First, all acts of transparency entail a redistribution of communicative power but not an inherently egalitarian or democratic one. Second, publicity is the central means by which transparency distributes communicative power. And third, scholars must analyze transparency, like publicity, as a professionalized and industrialized field. By centering questions of power and practice, this special issue aims to animate a research agenda attentive to the relational character of both transparency and publicity in hopes of foregrounding the ways the concepts might be used in service of more equitable political alignments.

Big data for climate action or climate action for big data?

“…For the WEF’s global dialogue on personal data, “meaningful” transparency and accountability are a matter of balance between demystifying ambiguity surrounding privacy and overwhelming the public with too much information about the complex nature of data flows. Full transparency “overwhelms and creates opacity” and “threatens the economics of secondary [data] usage,” whereas “effective” transparency is “contextual and relevant only on specific data usages” (WEF, 2014: 7; see Wood and Aronczyk, 2020). The report distinguished a “user-centered” approach from a “user-centric” one: while the former focuses on providing just the right amount of data to “empower individuals in meaningful transactions and experiences that are consistent with their expectations” (WEF, 2014: 8), the latter overburdened individuals with the need to make decisions regarding data management despite their “limited capacities and tools for making appropriate decisions to preserve their interests…undermining the larger goal” of a balanced data ecosystem (2014: 7–8).…”

Metaphors of Visibility: Rhetorical Practices in the Normalization of Individual Online Image Management

“…Elsewhere, I have referred to this version of self-presentation promoted in the ORM industry as “strategic transparency” (Draper, 2019b, p. 102): a kind of managed visibility that obscures as much as it reveals. As Wood and Aronczyk (2020) describe in the introduction to this special issue. describe in the introduction to this special issue, the power of transparency as a concept is rooted in its construction as a neutral form of information sharing.…”

“…The version of transparency encouraged by companies in the ORM industry—one that claims to direct visibility through the circulation of digital content designed to appeal to search engine logics—troubles any preconception that this approach to transparent self-presentation is an exercise in unmediated communication. Instead, the industry’s strategies offer a practiced and curated transparency that is designed to offer a “publicity-worthy self.” 3 In this way, the language of transparency is applied to individuals and deployed as a promotional strategy (see Wood & Aronczyk, 2020).…”

“…Instead, the industry's strategies offer a practiced and curated transparency that is designed to offer a "publicity-worthy self." 3 In this way, the language of transparency is applied to individuals and deployed as a promotional strategy (see Wood & Aronczyk, 2020).…”

Who Is Community Engagement For?: The Endless Loop of Democratic Transparency

“…As such, this article contributes to the project described by Wood and Aronczyk (2020) in the Introduction to this issue, by relating the “ideological celebration of transparency” to the substantive and ongoing work organizational actors must undertake to produce those celebrations. In this case, elite actors in the higher education field claim that community-scale activities are worthwhile for faculty, students, and community members only if conducted transparently—and devote a substantial portion of institutional energies to promoting and validating this assumption.…”