Digital Performance in Everyday Life

Digital Performance in Everyday Life combines theories of performance, communication, and media to explore the many ways we perform in our everyday lives through digital media and in virtual spaces.

Digital communication technologies and the social norms and discourses that developed alongside these technologies have altered the ways we perform as and for ourselves and each other in virtual spaces. Through a diverse range of topics and examples―including discussions of self-identity, surveillance, mourning, internet memes, storytelling, ritual, political action, and activism―this book addresses how the physical and virtual have become inseparable in everyday life, and how the digital is always rooted in embodied action. Focusing on performance and human agency, the authors offer fresh perspectives on communication and digital culture.

The unique, interdisciplinary approach of this book will be useful to scholars, artists, and activists in communication, digital media, performance studies, theatre, sociology, political science, information technology, and cybersecurity―along with anyone interested in how communication shapes and is shaped by digital technologies.

Lyndsay Michalik Gratch is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Syracuse University, NY. Her research, creative work, and teaching focus on the connections between communication, performance studies, digital culture, creative adaptation, and remix.

Ariel Gratch is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at Utica College, NY, where he teaches courses in storytelling, performance studies, and rhetoric. His research focuses on the impact of storytelling on our everyday lives.