Chapter 20
Flow and mobile media
Broadcast fixity to digital fluidity
In this chapter, we argue for an updated and materialist understanding of the concept flow as a means for examining how mobile media function to create free subjects amenable to neoliberal configurations of governance and capital. Raymond Williams first described flow in his 1974 book Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974/2003) as the televisual techniques used to maintain audiences’ attention to the television screen, at times for several consecutive hours. Williams was trying to understand how disparate television content (news, sports, movies, commercial advertisements, public service announcements, game shows, etc.) were made ...
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