Media function as resonance vaults synchronizing affects, not channels for information.

Evidence

The ‘mediasphere’ very quickly came into view as an ‘echosystem’: against our habitual way of thinking, in which the media are thought of as channels through which information circulates, it seemed sounder to see them as vaults in which resonance phenomena are organized, resulting in the synchronization of our movements, affects and imaginations. Joint attention is also based on the play of echoes: when my interlocutor turns to look in a particular direction, my look tends to follow his with a very slight delay, in the same way that the nymph Echo repeated what was said to her after a short interval. Finally, like every Echo has its Narcissus, we saw that at the level of individuating attention, the confidence that enables me to take part in human interactions comes from the positive resonances that my behaviour produces in the attention of the other, nurturing the sense that my narcissism has of its own value. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 505

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the book’s central reframing of media as ‘echosystem’ rather than channel.
• XREF: Resonates with McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’ and Frankfurt’s mass-synchronization thesis. — connects to: Media manipulation is not a them-versus-us relation but a shared echosystem — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 96; Connectivity transmits unchanged information while sensitivity transforms its participants — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 109; Media devices now function as talismans of connectivity rather than instruments of listening — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 52

Broader Connections

• Connectivity transmits unchanged information while sensitivity transforms its participants #expands (0.85) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 109
• Media manipulation is not a them-versus-us relation but a shared echosystem #expands (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 96