Expectation and anticipation: research assemblages for elections

ABSTRACT

In this paper we interrogate how different research assemblages act as affect-enhancing devices for elections by drawing from the 2015 Canadian Federal election. The paper uses scholarship from media events traditions to devise an ontological framework for analysing the mediatization of elections and to show how research assemblages propagate a myth of the mediated centre. We then discuss two examples of how research assemblages are deployed as mood enhancing devices within election coverage. The first example focuses on how polling data is deployed to generate and sustain a myth of the mediated centre within an ontology of expectation. For the second example, we turn to how the emergence of a participatory condition in contemporary sociality introduces an ontology of anticipation that further problematizes the role of research assemblages in the mediatization of elections. In the final sections of the paper, we examine a case study of Creative Publics: Art-Making Inspired by the Federal Election to discuss alternative approaches to researching elections that also draw on an ontology of anticipation. We show how alternative research assemblages can channel the anticipation generated by participatory politics to yield more diverse and critical forms of participation in the lead up to elections.

KEYWORDS:

• Myth of the mediated centre
• research assemblage
• elections
• media events
• affect
• participation
• inventive methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Frederik Lesage

Frederik Lesage is an Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technologies in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. He completed his doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2009 in the Department of Media and Communications on the topic of how creative organizations appropriate new media infrastructural standards as part of collective artistic practices. Frédérik specializes in digital culture and theories of cultural production. His ongoing research deals with how artists and other cultural practitioners design and use digital media with a particular focus on the links between discourses of creative agency and digitally mediated practice.

Tara Mahoney

Tara Mahoney holds a PhD from the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Her work uses practice-based research to examine how amateur cultural production operates as a form of participatory politics in contemporary society. She is currently the research fellow in climate change communications at the David Suzuki Foundation. Tara is also the creative director of Gen Why Media, a non-profit creative agency focused on producing public art, media and events for social issues.

Peter Zuurbier

Peter Zuurbier was awarded a PhD from the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He is a co-author of Masamune’s Blade: A Proposition for Dialectic Affect Research published by Peter Lang.