What is editorialization?

Abstract

This paper is the result of eight years of work on the concept of editorialization that was done in the context of the international seminar “Écritures numériques et éditorialisation”, which I have been co-organizing with Nicolas Sauret since 2008. I propose a definition of editorialization as the set of dynamics that produce and structure digital space. These dynamics can be understood as the interactions of individual and collective actions within a particular digital environment. Starting from this definition I try to describe how authority works in digital space.

L’ontologie du numérique

“…Si, à partir des années 1990, les technologies et les infrastructures informatiques ont souvent été analysées comme si elles produisaient un espace autre, séparé de l'espace physique (on connaît la fortune critique des termes « cyberespace » ou « déterritorialisation »), les chercheurs ont eu tendance plus récemment à ne plus considérer l'espace numérique en rupture avec l'espace prétendument « non numérique ». Ainsi, nous évoluerions désormais dans un espace hybride que les infrastructures informatiques participent à construire et à structurer (Beaude 2012, Vitali-Rosati 2016.…”

Author, Editor, Engineer — Code & the Rewriting of Authorship in Scholarly Editing

“…a human reader) to do so. Code in contrast, as Vitali-Rosati (2016) argues, does operate on reality and produces reality when executed. In this sense code has a proxied reproducible agency that can be congruent with the intent of its author.…”

“…The limits and effects of the politics and agency of objects like books and software is a discourse in itself (Woolgar and Cooper 1999). Vitali-Rosati (2016) and Berry (2014) seem to argue that these effects in the case of software are more immediate and concrete than in the case of text. Suffice to say here that this agency exists.…”