Toward a theory of editorialization

Marcello Vitali-Rosati

Utrecht - 2019-07-12

A short history

A particular context

French notion of édition
Bridging an old tradition with new practices
Publishing in digital environments
Many theories focusing on the “support” (Jeanneret, Souchier, Bachimont, Zacklad)

In this presentation I would like to propose to you a short introduction to the theory of editorialization, a concept that has an important theoretical role in the francophone reflection on digital culture. This theory emerged as a way of understanding publishing in digital environments and became more and more a general and philosophical theory of the digital turn and culture.

The notion of editorialization has emerged in a particular francophone context. To understand this concept we should start from the french idea of “édition” : l’édition is at the same time publishing and editing. It means all the field of publication in a very broad sense: everything which is linked to the production and dissemination of content.

Talking about editorialization and using this radical “edit” means to try to bridge the old tradition of “édition” with the new emerging practices of producing and disseminating contents online.

So the first need to which the concept of editorialization tried to answer is to understand what “édition” or publishing was becoming after the explosion of digital environments - and especially the web.

Between the end of the nineties and the first years of the two thousands many theories emerged in France trying to address the impact of a specific material form of inscription - or media - and the meaning of a content. We could cite the theory of enonciation editoriale aiming that the meaning of a content is in part produced by the very material form the content takes - a book, a journal, but also which kind of book, with which special format and so on. This material aspect seemed more and more important probably because of the fact that new delivery channels were emerging. The theory of documentarisation and redocumentarisation tried to figure out how a content conceived for the printed medium changed its own meaning when it was adapted to a digital environment.

A strange appearence

Brigitte Guyot 2004?
Bruno Bachimont (2007):

The goal is no longer to find documents but to produce new ones using available resources. One thus moves away from indexing for research in favor of indexing for publication. Since the latter is carried out according to certain standards and norms, editorialization enables indexed segments to be enlisted in the editorial process for new publications.

Bruno Bachimont, « Nouvelles tendances applicatives : de l’indexation à l’éditorialisation », inL’indexation multimédia, Paris, Hermès, 2007, Online

It is difficult to identify when exactly the term is used for the first time. In 2004, Brigitte Guyot2 used the term with a not so clear meaning in the draft of a paper and she then remove it from the published paper - the draft is still avaiable on an institutional repositiry. Bruno Bachimont outlined the concept of editorialization for the first time in 2007, in a chapter of the book L’indexation multimédia entitled “Nouvelles tendances applicatives : de l’indexation à l’éditorialisation”. In this text, Bachimont discusses the move towards indexation in what he refers to as “editorialization” (I translate) :

The concept of editorialization here serves to describe an editorial activity that is based on the indexed fragments of a document. Bachimont employs editorialization to explain an important shift : that of a non-digital document to a digital document. This shift consists of a transfer of information that is restructured in order to be adapted to a digital environment. The term is thus related to digital environments and is used to explain the necessity of adapting non-digital content to digital support. Bachimont’s use of the word implies the following characteristics :

A deep link between editing activity and the practice of producing content in the digital realm.

The institutionalization of the term

2008: the workshop on editorialization (Anne-Laure Brisac, Marcello Vitali-Rosati, Gérard Wormser, MSH Paris-Nord)

the concept of editorialization may be characterized by : the articulation of content production, technical and communicative factors, and the dynamics of contemporary exchanges in the humanities.

Wormser, Vitali-Rosati, Presentation of the Lab Interdisciplinary practices and the circulation of knowledge : towards an editorialization of Human and social sciences, MSH Paris-Nord, 2008

First narrow definition

Editorialization may be defined as a set of technical devices (networks, servers, platforms, CMS, algorithms of search engines), structures (hypertext, multimedia, metadata), practices (annotation, comments, recommendations via social networks) that can produce and organize content on the web

Vitali-Rosati, Marcello. « Les revues littéraires en ligne : entre éditorialisation et réseaux d’intelligences ». Études françaises 50, nᵒ 3 (2014): 87.

Characteristic 1: open

multiplicity of actors
multiplicity of intentions

Contents and objects are merged

There is no more difference between contents and things

a function organising relationships between objects on the web

Vitali-Rosati, Marcello. « Auteur ou acteur du web ? » Implications philosophiques, 10 juillet 2012. https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/handle/1866/12980.

Characteristic 2. Ontology

architecture of Being
merging knowledge and Being

2016 definition

Editorialization is the set of dynamics that produce and structure digital space. These dynamics can be understood as the interactions of individual and collective actions within a particular digital environment.

Vitali-Rosati, Marcello. Qu’est-ce que l’éditorialisation?, Sens public 2016

Who is the subject of editorialization?

“individual actions”?
“digital environment”?

A new definition

Editorialization is the set of dynamics that constitute digital space and that allow the emergence of meaning. These dynamics are the result of different forces and actions that subsequently determine the appearance and the identification of particular objects (people, communities, algorithms, platforms …) Marcello Vitali-Rosati, _Toward a prehuman thinking: Digital humanities, editorialization and metaontology, Amodern, forthcoming

Today, in view of the above considerations, I would tend to revisit the second part of this definition. Indeed, while I attempted to avoid the opposition of human-machine, I chose only to refer to an interaction of actions with an environment. We could interpret this definition by saying that there are finally human beings who interact with machines. This is not what the theory of editorialization intends to express. There are no individuals, communities and digital environments that interact and give rise to the digital space. Rather, there is a space that is the dynamic result of a set of interactions between different dynamic forces. From these interactions emerge individuals, communities and digital environments. We may therefore revise the definition as follows:

Editorialization is the set of dynamics that constitute digital space and that allow the emergence of meaning. These dynamics are the result of different forces and actions that subsequently determine the appearance and the identification of particular objects (people, communities, algorithms, platforms …)

Editorialization can thus be interpreted as the set of material conditions of mediation that determine the emergence of a world. Editorialization is an access to the world that comes with the world itself.

An example may clarify the definition. An individual X is the result of a series of dynamics that define this individual and make him appear. X is what emerges from an ever-changing process that involves different forces and actions: algorithms, clicks, data structures… All these forces determine, for instance, that the query “X” on Google Search gives some particular results, that the profiles of X on different platforms are more or less visible, displayed one way or another and that, finally, X is that particular person. These dynamics are inscribed, they are material mediations: if I can think about X, this means that digital environments can think about X in the same way. X exists via this thinking. Access to X and his being are the same thing. The only exception here is that this access is not human, it is present, inscribed, recorded, concrete, material, even without us.¹

Editorialization: what for?

Questioning the space

How can we produce public spaces?

Publishing sphere
Journals as public spaces
Transcan16

Questioning who we are

Dynamics producing spaces and relationships and then:
- Formats
- Protocols
- Environments
- Algorithms
- Cultural values
- People
- Communities
- …

Thanks!

Concretely, in digital environments, these dynamics are part of the logic of the model. The interpretative model first, then the functional and finally the physical model [@meunier_humanites_2014] are categorizations of concrete, registered and material modes of access to the world.↩