Ms Yuting He1
1University of Sydney, Camperdown, Australia
Biography:
Yuting (Alina) He is a doctoral candidate with the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney.
Abstract:
The widespread availability of the Internet and the use of quantum-related technologies have shaped the most up-to-date mode of ubiquitous witnessing: social media livestreaming. Livestreaming – the real-time transmission of audiovisual content – on social media, has introduced unprecedented speed in disseminating real-time information beyond geographical boundaries, creating senses of proximity and quotidianness in global political mobilisation, participation and resistance. Under the backdrop of the ”return” of geopolitics in the 2020s, such new realities of global space-time entanglement partially validate Paul Virilio’s provocations of politicised speed, transforming the competitive nature between space and time into a quantum-like entanglement in global politics. This study investigates how livestreaming, as a new form of “fast-than-ever” witnessing, transforms how security is known publicly, how power relations are understood and how security subjects are enacted. Grounded in the recent practice-turn and the quantum-inspired International Relations (IR) theory, this study will focus on the “more-than-human” agents that enable the observer-effects and subatomic practices of livestreaming in global security. A quantum-inspired dromological analysis will be adopted to examine how quantum-related algorithmic practices, units of infrastructure and digital devices that sustain audio-visual transmission have shaped new discourses of security in ubiquitous social media livestreaming. Throughout the analysis, this project aims to reveal new types of danger in global security in the quantum age, contributing valuable insights into the study of dromology in IR amidst the evolving dynamics of speed, technology, and quantum effects on global security studies.