Subjetividade contemporânea e plataformas digitais: lógicas e atmosferas comunicacionais pelo Instagram

Abstract

This doctoral thesis aims to investigate which communicational logics and atmospheres affect the constitution of contemporary subjectivities in digital platform contexts, focusing on Instagram. The research problem is guided by the urgency of understanding the effects of the platformization of life on the ordinary subject, caught between the imperative of visibility and algorithmic opacity. As an empirical horizon, the investigation relies on the indicial study (Braga, 2008) of the public Instagram profile @mairacastanheiro, belonging to writer Maíra Castanheiro, an “ordinary” woman whose writings of the self expose the intersection between intimate dilemmas and commercial offerings of her books and online courses. The theoretical framework articulates notions such as 1) writings of the self (Arfuch, 2010; Rago, 2013; Marques, Pessoa, Martino, 2022), gender performativity (Butler, 2015, 2018), and 2) selfmanagement (Gaulejac, 2007; Safatle; Silva Júnior; Dunker, 2020), and organizational communication (Baldissera, 2007, 2009, 2022; Mafra, 2022), identifying them as constitutive aspects, respectively apparent and latent, of communicational logics present in contemporary digital platforms under neoliberal rationality in the age of performance (Bruno, 2005, 2013; Sibilia, 2015, 2016). Methodologically grounded in Atmospheric Studies (Böhme, 1993, 2017; Griffero, 2013, 2016; Gumbrecht, 2014; Hasse, 2015, 2018; Schmitz, 2023), aesthetic research (Gumbrecht, 1994, 2010), and evidentiary paradigm (Braga, 2008), the thesis proposes the Methodology for the Analysis of Communicational Atmospheres, featuring an aestheticinterpretive approach. It assumes the premise of the bodily sensitivity of the "bodyseismograph" (corpo-sismógrafo) and creates the analytical model Diagram of the Affective Regime Quadrants to examine an initial empirical corpus of 30 analytical units collected through cartographic drifts across the investigated profile. As results, beyond consolidating the methodological device itself, after an in-depth examination of eight selected analytical units, the research identifies the emergence of four pairs of communicational atmospheres in dialectical movement, constitutive of contemporary subjectivities in digital platform contexts: Expectation and Progress; Approval and Pressure; Excitement and Frustration; and Availability and Fatigue. In conclusion, the thesis demonstrates that the failure of self-management exposes somatic exhaustion and unmasks the neoliberal myth of the ideology of progress (Benjamin, 1987). It asserts that these atmospheres, despite their fissures and fractures, act as tendencies shaping contemporary subjectivities, while supporting the working hypothesis that it is possible to practice a sensitive and critical listening to such subjectivities from within digital technologies themselves.