Electrodance as a"being-together". New forms of mediatization in the communication of youth styles

Résumé

This thesis focuses on the study of what is known as ElectroDance youth style - i.e. a dance and sound style blossomed in the context of Parisian clubs and affluent suburbs by 2006 which will be quickly spread in subsequent years, firstly across France, and later all over the world, with the aim to explore the way youth cultures and styles are culturally produced under the contemporary communicative environment. The research was premised by the fact that, in the decades before the irruption of network communication technologies, forms of ‘being together’ represented by youth cultures, subcultures and styles were shaped under the influence of a regime of global mass-communication dominated by a set of prevalent, intertwined broadcast socio-technological systems - e.g. television, radio, record and the like. The case of ElectroDance, by contrast, is used to shed light into the several transformations taking place in the realm of communication and practice of today’s young people resulting from the use of new media. Therefore, the interest is focused in particular on the crucial role that the latest wave of digital network technologies - i.e. digital interfaces such as YouTube, blogs or Facebook - have played, and continue to play, in the creation, development and dissemination of a youth cultural style like this.The thesis empirically and theoretically analyses Electrodancers’ everyday practices where an intensive use of new media generates new ways of being together. In doing that, several concepts of the Communication Theory are discussed, like those of mediatization, interface or the differentiation between network and broadcast communication. These theoretical tools help to understand, for example, the extent to which the electro-dancer group internal hierarchies and social roles submits to new media and is subject to the specific interaction logic of interfaces such as YouTube, blogs or Facebook, epitomizing the mediatization of common culture; the perceived influence of global celebrity culture in electro-dancers’ forms of self-presentation and group identity-building processes; as well as the ever-changing nature of the interrelations among actors, places, commerce and technology which underlie the configuration of local scenes throughout two different periods of the style’s history, accounting for the shifting balance between broadcast and network communication. Backed by the empirical evidence provided by the case of ElectroDance, the analysis of these and other relevant issues implicitly pursues to show the ways in which, for example, traditional notions such as public and private, production and consumption as well as global and local and mediated and face-to-face interaction become differently articulated today, acquiring a new expression at times of a shifted global arena of mass-communication; one where elements of continuity - e.g. the long-lasting influence of Media and Cultural Industries - coexist with others of disruption and innovation - e.g. the arrival of internet-based corporations enabling new channels for the emergence of grassroots culture forms like ElectroDance - in ways that differ from what we witnessed in just past decades.