“Stream” as Topoi: The Discontinuity of Streaming Video and Hypermodern Society

LIU Chunyi; HU Yong

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Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication ›› 2025, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (8) : 95-114.

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“Stream” as Topoi: The Discontinuity of Streaming Video and Hypermodern Society

LIU Chunyi ,
HU Yong

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Abstract

“Stream”, as media topoi, has always maintained its conceptual persistence and fluidity in the transformations of communication technologies, media forms, and social structures. While the topological discourse of stream becomes increasingly pronounced in the era of streaming video, its mediality and societal reconstructive power paradoxically manifest as a form of disruption of flow. Through interfaces, data, and the practice of “binge-watching”, streaming video restructures the logic of media programming, circulation, and reception, thereby revealing the essentially discontinuous nature of the flow. The medial factors driving this disruption-namely, immediacy, privatization, and interactivity—dismantle the spatiotemporal and organizational frameworks once shaped by traditional media. In their place, they foster a presentist temporality and unstable subjectivities, ultimately intensifying the fragmentation and imbalance characteristic of hypermodernism.

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Streaming video / media topology / streaming media platform / hypermodernism

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LIU Chunyi , HU Yong. “Stream” as Topoi: The Discontinuity of Streaming Video and Hypermodern Society[J]. Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication. 2025, 47(8): 95-114

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