After supersynchronisation: How media synchronise the social

Abstract

The multiple nature of time has by now been well established across a wide range of scholarly traditions in the humanities and social sciences. The article takes that insight as a starting point, in order to discuss the tools, work, sites and contestations involved in common temporal frameworks and structures that cross and join together time’s multiplicities. We thus articulate and discuss key components of synchronisation, a concept with significant potential for understanding common temporalities and social orders. Our emphasis is particularly on media, their technological and representational affordances for synchronisation. The article’s approach to social and mediated times presents an alternative to Hartmut Rosa and François Hartog’s influential theories about the temporal configuration of the present historical moment. Their understanding of the present tends more towards unity and uniformity, particularly by means of chronology. We follow Luhmann in arguing that ‘there is no supersynchronization’ producing such privileged, unitary temporal orders. We propose pursuing an understanding of both present and past through investigations of synchronisation itself, which always exists in plural, always involves different synchronisations in competition with each other, is subject to social and historical contingencies. The article combines theoretical and conceptual arguments with historical and contemporary cases. We investigate the synchronisation of national collectives by means of broadcast media, of individuals in everyday life by means of social media, and the recalibration of various contemporary media to a global scale in order to tackle the issue of climate change. These cases move from past and relatively comprehensive forms of synchronisation, via more localised forms today, to highly uncertain and heterogeneous ones in the future.