More Than Movies: Social Formations in Informal Networks of Media Sharing

Abstract

This project examines the social structures, formations, and practices of informal networks of media sharing (INMSs) through both historical and sociological lenses. INMSs are comprised of individuals who distribute and circulate media to one another through noncommercial, unauthorized networks. The networks can be centered around texts, such as the early videophile publication The Videophile’s Newsletter, or they can be constituted by disparate groups of people who come together as a community using digital platforms like BitTorrent. While nominally concerned with circulating media, INMSs are also sources of social sustenance for their members and are sites of struggle for social and symbolic capital and power. They illuminate the complex ways in which community members utilize media as a starting point to satisfy a variety of needs, including developing bodies of cultural and technical knowledge, thinking through legal and ethical concerns, creating social bonds, and engaging in a variety of pedagogical practices. In short, INMSs are loci of social and cultural meaning-making for their members. This dissertation catalogs and analyzes the social practices and formations of three INMSs, the aforementioned Videophile’s Newsletter and two private, BitTorrent networks focused on cinema, Great Cinema and FilmDestruction, showing there to be diachronic and transplatform similarities between different networks. Rather than instances of rupture and divergence, this project argues that these networks are best understood through an evolutionary lens. It contends that INMSs and other similar formations should be increasingly studied because of their prevalence throughout the 20th and 21st centuries and their importance to consumers as unauthorized media distribution spaces whereby network members have greater latitude to experiment with media and create unique, diverse social structures and practices that are not contingent upon restrictions imposed by the media and copyright industries.