Infrastructures of flow: streaming media as elemental media

Streaming media are often placed in a lineage of electrical technologies that promise connectivity at a distance. We argue, however, that the material-discursive entanglement of streaming is a technological descendent of pre-electrical attempts to control essential resources through flow. Inspired b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Critical studies in media communication 2022-03, Vol.39 (2), p.92-106
Main Authors: Grandinetti, Justin, Ingraham, Chris
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Elemental media
flow
infrastructure
Mass media
nature-culture
Streaming media
Technology
Television
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Summary:Streaming media are often placed in a lineage of electrical technologies that promise connectivity at a distance. We argue, however, that the material-discursive entanglement of streaming is a technological descendent of pre-electrical attempts to control essential resources through flow. Inspired by John Durham Peters's emphasis on elemental media, we examine streaming media practices that date to antiquity in order to assess infrastructures of flow today. By considering material technologies that capture and channel critical resources to be the "original" streaming media, we demonstrate how the idealized metaphor of streaming conceals the imbrication of human--technology--nature that underpins the capture and channel of flows. Consequently, we position streaming media as infrastructural, indebted to environments, and as part of a lineage that includes not only the telegraph, telephone, television, and film, but also rivers, canals, aqueducts, and pipelines.
ISSN:1529-5036
1479-5809
DOI:10.1080/15295036.2021.2015536