The interactive synopticon
Participatory visibility and public disruption in IRL live streaming
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19224338 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Harmata Aboubakar (0009-0005-0277-8208, University of Toronto, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-06 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Media & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14614448261453299 |
| OpenAlex | W7163827001 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 35 |
IRL (“in-real-life”) live streaming turns public space into an interactive broadcast structured by live chat, monetization tools, and real-time engagement metrics. At its extreme, “deviant IRL” involves streamers staging public provocation as content. This article asks under what conditions participatory visibility converts being watched from a mechanism of discipline into an incentive for public norm violation. Examining two critical cases (Vitaly Zdorovetskiy and “Johnny Somali”) through live stream content analysis of archived video, chat logs, news coverage, and institutional records, I develop the concept of the interactive synopticon, in which the many not only watch the few, but intermittently steer them through live prompts, paid text-to-speech, and metrified feedback. I identify three interlocking mechanisms—live audience steering, a reinforcement-amplification loop, and lagged accountability—that explain how participatory visibility generates short-run escalation while producing durable records enabling institutional sanction, with implications for platform governance and the uneven distribution of sanction across race, nationality, and gender
Audience participation · Citizen journalism · Corporate governance · Incentive · Live Streaming · Monetization · Public participation · Public space · Visibility · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Media Studies and Communication · Social Media and Politics
Reality TV
Affective Publics
If…Then
The Culture of Control
Nothing but a “titty streamer”
The work of being watched
The Construction of Platform Imperialism in the Globalization Era
Camming
Race, Gender, and Deviance in Xbox Live
Reassembling the Social
Perception of Pranks on Social Media
Performance Crime and Justice
YouTube pranking across cultures
A Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Phenomena
Crime, media and the will-to-representation
Reaction value
The Affective Labor and Performance of Live Streaming on Twitch.tv
Never Battle Alone”
Gamergate and The Fappening
The socio-technical architecture of digital labor
Managing visibility on YouTube through algorithmic gossip
Want to be on the top? Algorithmic power and the threat of invisibility on Facebook
The Viewer Society
Liveness redux
Using thematic analysis in psychology
The Division of Labour in Society
Visibility in Social Theory and Social Research
Data Colonialism
Algorithmic content moderation
Free Labor
The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century
Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research
Digital colonialism
| Highly cited | No |
|---|