Twitter as a Phantasmagoric Space and Simulatic Flâneurs

Abstract

This article aims to structurally analyze Twitter as an interactive, participatory media type that is one of the most effective channels of new media in political/ideological discourse- production, as well as the existential position and situation of its users, through the phenomena of space and identity. Given social media as a practice of individualization/ socialization is an ontologically natural, technically artificial extension of modern life, the article explores its existential effects upon the modern individual; its transformation of the emotional, reflexive, perceptive and behavioral patterns in individual and social life; finally the paradigmatic change behind its undeniable role in the formation of a particular type of human being and civilization that are very different from their precedents in history. To do this, primarily (I) the place of social media within the modern age and paradigm will be elaborated, then (II) literal and theoretical uses, definitions, areas of meaning and similarities with the practice of Twitter of concepts (phantasmagory, flâneur and simulation) that are likened to each other in terms of space and identity are examined. The following section (III) contextually introduces the technical structure of Twitter and the final section (IV) detects certain political/ideological/parodical aspects of the language (discourse) constituted by digital identities in a digital space and reassesses the phenomenon/flâneur type semiotically.