Convergence Citizen: Innovative Designs of Mediated Citizenship : A Case Study of the Swedish Convergence Festival Gather

Abstract: This thesis studies citizen identity in the context of convergence festivals. These are large-scale events, curated as interdisciplinary meetings that materialize the knowledge economy and a participatory discourse. As media text constitute subjective reality, citizenship is negotiated in and through them. The employed theoretical framework of civic cultures suggests six interrelated dimensions through which citizenship evolves. The Swedish festival Gather is studied as a case example. Two published texts designed by Gather are studied by employing a social semiotic multimodal discourse analysis. The findings advocate for a widened understanding of citizen identity as a contingent, cultural practice negotiated in everyday life. It concludes that convergence festivals are productive junctions of discourse, intertwining democratic values with the cultivation of novelty. Civic discourses converge with such of connectivity and productivity, naturalizing growth and technology as means for social change. Citizen identity is foremost found in private agency.