Workshop Digital textualities and editorialization
The “Digital Writing and Editorialisation” seminar engages in a discussion on editorialisation issues, including all organisational, structuring and publishing practicesrelating to web content.. The seminar begins with the premise that technological systems used within the framework of digital writing determine the context of content, its accessibility and ultimately participate in the emergence of meaning.
Digital writing challenges the foundational models that were developed for knowledge production and distribution during the instauration of the paper publishing tradition . All digital content functions within a complex technical organology, characterised by the convergence of platforms, formats and standards. A document (should we even still be discussing documents ?) gains its legitimacy, its accessibility and its meaning through this convergence, and cannot be considered an isolated unit. For instance, in order to comprehend a literary text, one must analyse the medium in which it was produced, namely all links and metadata that make said text visible as well as user interactions that help legitimise it.
To better understand the meaning of digital content, it is thus crucial to examine the notion of support itself. One might ask : Is it just a screen ? Or an editorial device that enables formatting (CMS, platform, etc.) ? Or an architectural system that determines its context and position in the vast network that is the Web ?
Following the seminars of the last four years, the present seminar pushes the discussion of theoretical reflection in the field even further. Specifically, theoretical reflection is examined in relation to the analysis of practices and experimentations, taking into account aspects such as the annotational functions, comment and user interactions involved in the production of content, the position occupied by algorithms and interfaces as well as the position of the author.
This seminar is made possible through the joint collaboration between the Sens Public journal, the Iri, the Université de Montréal and McGill University and is funded by the MSH Paris-Nord. The seminars began in 2009 in partnership with the laboratory Invisu (INHA–CNRS).