The age of blob communication: trapped within the algorithmic mesh = L’era de la comunicació blob: atrapats dins de la malla algorítmica

Abstract

The accelerated transformations of the hegemonic communicative and cultural model have rendered obsolete concepts that until now have been key, such as the culture of surveillance (Zuboff) or the network society (Castells). The critical examination of these digital transformations and the discussion of significant works from different currents of philosophy and sociology of culture have allowed us to identify a new hegemonic form of communication, which we have called blob communication, and which we have described as the infrastructure that challenges all human mediations in a mercurial mesh or rabbit hole supported by algorithms. This communication blob is the communication apparatus that sustains the culture and capitalism of containment. Based on this diagnosis, the article presents conceptual avenues for thinking about a kind of communication and journalism that can overcome the capitalism of containment and propose new ways of imagining and narrating human communities.