10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17318
This introduction provides an overview of the articles included in the second part of the special issue on "digital circulation", whose first portion has been published in the previous issue of the Journal (1/2016). In doing so, the authors reconnect the content of this issue with the theoretical and empirical insights developed in the introduction that accompanied the first part.
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2038-3460
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Alessandro Delfanti
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
data flow
A Second Round of Digital Circulation
Text.Serial.Journal
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Editorial
2017-01-24
2023-06-21
2017-01-24
2023-08-21
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TS
Alessandro Delfanti
2016
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17318
5
University of Toronto
2038-3460
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data flow
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A Second Round of Digital Circulation
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17318/16174
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                                                                  Guest Editors’ Introduction

A Second Round of Digital Circulation

Gabriele Balbi                       Alessandro Delfanti                 Paolo Magaudda
     USI-Lugano (CH)                     University of Toronto (CAN)      Università di Padova (IT)



     Abstract: This introduction provides an overview of the articles included
     in the second part of the special issue on ‘digital circulation’, whose first
     portion has been published in the previous issue of the Journal (1/2016). In
     doing so, the authors reconnect the content of this issue with the theoreti-
     cal and empirical insights developed in the introduction that accompanied
     the first part.

     Keywords: Digital circulation; media; communication; infrastructures; data
     flow.

     Corresponding author: Paolo Magaudda, Dip. Fisppa, Università di
     Padova, Via Cesarotti, 10/12, 35123 Padova, Italy. Email:
     paolo.magaudda@unipd.it.



    This issue of Tecnoscienza is the second part of a special series analys-
ing ‘digital circulation’ that completes the issue that was published in July
2016 (Tecnoscienza 1/2016). The concept of ‘circulation’ is emerging as a
central concern in both digital media studies and science and technology
studies. In this issue, we stress the need to cross-pollinate these two fields
through approaches that address the interrelationship between the cul-
tural and technological transformations that underlie digital circulation.
Studying digital objects as they travel through space, time, and social
spheres requires a close analysis of their cultural and political significance.
Digital circulation produces meanings, responds to social and cultural
needs, and shapes different social worlds. However, while this second
part presents articles that mainly move away from analysis of the material
infrastructures that underlie digital circulation, we aim to keep technolo-
gy at the core of our work. In our original introduction that was pub-
lished within the first part of the double special issue, we provided an ini-
tial theoretical framework for the study of digital circulation in science &
technology studies and media studies (Balbi, Delfanti and Magaudda
2016). Referring to the work of Appadurai, we emphasized the need to
identify the patterns of circulation and techno-political regimes that sus-

TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
7 (2), pp. 5-8 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                                    2016
6                                                            Tecnoscienza – 7 (2)

tain and create the life trajectories of digital objects; additionally, we ar-
gued for a multifaceted understanding of their specific and material biog-
raphies – their ‘social lives’. This cannot be separated from a theoretically
grounded grasp of the technological and material levels that constitute
digital circulation.
     In this second part, we present a series of studies that complement
the first set of articles by insisting upon the lively cultural and political
significance of digital circulation in diverse areas, such as mapping, televi-
sion, youth and social media, and sexuality. Articles in this issue thus ex-
pand the empirical base for the development of understanding digital cir-
culation while simultaneously converging in the production of a shared
approach to examining the complex relationship between digital technol-
ogy studies and theories of circulation. To align with the rhetorical use of
the circulation framework as presented in our original introduction, we
stress that the new articles published in this issue also explore and ex-
pand the circulation of ideas among STS, media and communication
studies as well as other relevant fields.
    This second issue on digital circulation begins with a “lecture” by
Amade M’charek entitled Performative circulations: On flows and stops
in forensic DNA practices. During the assembly of these two special is-
sues, we discovered that the work of M’charek was surprisingly aligned
with our own work. Therefore, we invited her to present her reflections
on the relevance of the notion of ‘circulation’ in the anthropology of sci-
ence. More specifically, M’charek focuses on ‘circulation’ as a framework
to investigate the way that DNA currently is constantly travelling from the
domain of scientific laboratories to the realm of the social world and vice
versa. In doing so, she shows that the process of circulation is not only a
way to examine how society and genetics relate to one another but also
the actual generator of the contexts in which DNA’s meanings and identi-
ties are constantly transformed and reconfigured.
    After this opening lecture, the special issue presents five essays that
contribute by elaborating upon and fostering the notion of circulation in
relation to different empirical contexts and theoretical frameworks.
    In Disciplining Change, Displacing Frictions. Two Structural Dimen-
sions of Digital Circulation across Land Registry Database Integration,
Annalisa Pelizza addresses the notion of circulation by focussing on cru-
cial issues in digital infrastructures, particularly frictions and resistances
in the circulation of data between different databases. The author bor-
rows concepts from semiotics to problematize infrastructures and stand-
ards that are involved in the database management of an institutional in-
frastructure in the Netherlands, thereby offering new insights into the
understanding of data circulation and, more specifically, how data circu-
lation resists being regulated by standard procedures.
    In Liquefying Social Capital. On the Bio-Politics of Digital Circulation
in a Palestinian Refugee Camp, Monika Halkort describes the material
political effects of data circulation in the context of a refugee camp in
Balbi, Delfanti & Magaudda                                                   7
Lebanon. The construction of spatial and social information about the
camp through the generation and circulation of speculative digital data is
interwoven with entrenched social knowledge and documentary evidence,
which shifts the balance of power within the camp. The conversion of
lived and embodied memory into data-informed forms makes claims of
land ownership visible and effective while simultaneously restricting indi-
vidual and collective life opportunities. The ‘probabilistic’ nature of geo-
graphical data is thus involved in the transformation of collective memory
into a tradable asset.
    The article written by Cosimo Marco Scarcelli and Claudio Riva is the
first of three contributions that are explicitly focussed on the use of digi-
tal media and how media appropriation in itself is at the centre of differ-
ent circulation processes. Hence, in Digital Literacy Circulation: Adoles-
cents and Flows of Knowledge about New Media, Scarcelli and Riva ad-
dress the process of appropriation of the Internet by Italian adolescents,
examining how competencies that are involved in its use circulate and are
reproduced among new generations. By addressing four different kinds of
flows of these competencies, which emerge from their empirical research,
the authors show that the appropriation of digital media can be under-
stood as a multi-layered circulation of competencies that is much more
complex and stratified than the vision offered by the notion of the ‘digital
divide’.
    Alberto Marinelli and Romana Andò, in their paper entitled From
Linearity to Circulation: How TV Flow is Changing in Networked Media
Space, focus on a key concept of television studies: ‘flow’. They claim that
this powerful idea, which was first analysed by Raymond Williams in the
1970s, is now changing directions from a producer-controlled phase to a
user-controlled phase. Due to the multiplication of screens and possibili-
ties of consumption as well as new forms of digital interactivity between
broadcasters and audiences, the authors claim that TV contents are
changing their classic models of circulation. Specifically, audiences can
now rephrase and control content, especially through social media. This
theoretical hypothesis is corroborated through unpublished data from the
Osservatorio Social TV 2015 research project that examined Italian TV
audiences’ consumption practices.
    Finally, the article by Renato Stella entitled Circulation of Technology,
Circulation of Desire. Cybersex and the ‘Sadian Collective Intellectual’
offers an additional contribution by reflecting on the notion of circulation
by presenting an analysis that is based on his ethnographic empirical re-
search on extreme online sexual activities. Borrowing from authors such
as Akim Bay and Pierre Levy, Stella elaborates upon the concept of the
‘Sadian collective intellectual’ to address the logic of the circulation of ex-
treme sexual narratives and imaginaries over the Internet. He also traces
their evolution from the libertine sexuality presented in novels by Mar-
quis de Sade to contemporary forms of online sexual interactions and cy-
bersex practices.
8                                                                Tecnoscienza – 7 (2)

    Combined with the contributions that were published in the previous
special issue, these articles further contribute by reflecting on the notion
of ‘circulation’ and also by expanding the same process of the circulation
of concepts and approaches among STS, media studies and other branch-
es of social research.


References

Balbi, G., Delfanti, A. and Magaudda, P. (2016) Digital Circulation: Media, Mate-
   riality, Infrastructures. An Introduction” in “Tecnoscienza: Italian Journal of
   Science & Technology Studies”, 7 (1), 7-16.
