Discipline and resistance on social media: Discourse, power and context in the Paul Chambers ‘Twitter Joke Trial’

•Emphasises importance of understanding ‘individual communicative nuance’ (ICN).•CDA is applicable for analysing power relations in new media technologies.•Refines and applies previous approaches to panoptic, synoptic and omnioptic power.•Demonstrates how ‘countercurrents’ of power are enabled through social media.•Proposes concept of synoptic resistance for analyses of power and social media.

This paper analyses discourse, power and context on social media. Through a theoretical discussion of the ‘Twitter Joke Trial’, we highlight the growing importance of understanding ‘individual communicative nuance’ (ICN) and complex power relations in the production and interpretation of online texts. But ICN is not the only problematic practice of online communications; there are other social and environmental factors that impact upon the production, consumption and interpretation of social media. Whilst adopting previous understandings of discourse, context and social practice we refine and apply models of panoptic and synoptic power that are applicable to the communicative complexities of the social media. These dimensions of power, we argue, are unfixed and shift according to the contextual environments in which they are produced and consumed. Hence, we show that critical discourse studies (CDS) can incorporate theoretical frameworks that provide the investigative and analytical approaches necessary for exploring power relations in digital media technologies. By developing this theoretical approach we propose the concept of synoptic resistance, which mobilizes oppositional power against authoritative surveillance. Whilst we do not deny that broader social structures maintain top-down power, we argue that ‘omnioptic’ media environments complicate these power relations in the ‘countercurrents’ they provide against authority.