Media Theory: A Framework for Interdisciplinary Conversations (original) (raw)
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On the cutting edge, or otherwise, of media and communication research
Nordicom review, 2000
Research at the forefront, new fields for research, the cutting edge? Given this rather ambitious and possibly grandiose brief, I began by asking around among my colleagues for their views, I kept my ears open at the recent ICA in San Francisco, so as to listen out for the new ideas in the air before they reached the always-delayed publication stage, and I scanned recent issues of the media and communication journals. But while the ICA was full of interesting ideas and people, I did not detect any major new orientations. Similarly, my colleagues looked rather blank when asked for the cutting edge in media research. And the journals are, by and large, publishing the same kinds of articles on the same kinds of subjects as they always do.
Mapping conversations about new media: the theoretical field of digital communication
New Media & Society, 2009
Abstract This article reflects on the current state of digital communication studies in the context of mass communication research. The objectives of the article are: 1) to characterize the enunciators and the contents of scientific conversations about digital communication; and 2) to sketch a map of possible interlocutors who might enrich this new research field. After quickly exploring the paradigms of mass communication studies, the article deals with the main theoretical conversations about digital communication. The second part of the article describes the transformations that the appearance of digital technology has generated in communication processes. The article concludes with an agenda of the main issues and partners that theoretical conversations about digital communication should include. The article analyzes the constitution of a new scientific field and describes the process that may, in the future, lead to the creation of a theory of digital communication.
(2017) PhD Seminar: Media Studies Theory and Literature (Social Science Approach)
Theory is the foundation of knowledge production. Drawing on literature from the fields of media studies, communication, sociology, and management, this course aims to equip PhD students with skills to learn, use, and build media theories. The course has three major components: 1. We start with the foundational theorists and theories, broadly in social science and specifically in media and communication studies. We will examine whether and how these theorists and theories remain relevant in the digital age. We will discuss how digital media have challenged conventional modes of theorizing. 2. In the second part, we will draw on milestone studies to showcase how theories are applied, criticized, appropriated, revised, and reclaimed, crossing disciplinary and national boundaries. 3. In the third part, students are encouraged to engage with media theories through review and research. This course is one of the two RTF 395 courses on key theories of communication and media studies. This fall semester seminar focuses on foundational scholars and theories on communication contexts, processes, and audiences. The readings reflect the diverse theoretical streams and approaches in communication and media studies: historical, critical, and political economy approaches in social science, including the Chicago School, the Frankfurt School, the Columbia School, and the Toronto School. Students will be guided step-by-step to achieve the following goals: A1. Demonstrate a solid understanding of: a. Major theoretical approaches and their confluence in media studies, especially as applicable to recent advancements in digital media studies b. Modes and processes of theorizing media and society A2. Develop skills to apply major media theories to specific research topics A3. Recognize various opportunities, challenges, and implications of doing and communicating media theories in a rapidly changing digital media landscape
Public Culture
In 1988, when Public Culture began, media appeared to be the primary infrastructure of a newly globalizing world. In those days, the readership of the journal had just become aware that media were not a monopoly of the Euro-American world. Satellites were breaking the link between terrestrial and territorial broadcasting systems, and it was not yet clear how nation-states would or even could respond. The Indian film industry, Latin American and Mexican telenovelas, the infant potentials of the personal computer, and the beginnings of the market for rental films were all new subjects for global cultural studies, which until then had been largely preoccupied with literature, and to a lesser extent, with cinema. In the 1990s, many authors and readers of Public Culture were primarily concerned with media flows, effects, geographies, and subjectivities. These interests are still with us. The world turned out not to be a global village. We now know that the medium is only half of the message and that conditions for dissemination are as important as their ends. In the past year, governments in Egypt, India, Myanmar, and Sudan, to name only a few, have shut off the Internet to stifle dissent; there are major political obstacles to connection. The stuff of media-screens, platforms, applications, clouds, networks, and invisible geographies (of wires, metals, impulses, and energies)-have opened our eyes to the planetary, shifting our attention from the global. The scale of our inquiries has shrunk down to the nano level and up to the galactic. Mediation turns out to be vital at both of these scales.
Medium, Messenger, Transmission: An Approach to Media Philosophy
2015
Transmission and/or Understanding? On the 'Postal' and 'Erotic' Principles of Communication Two Preliminaries and a Problem How can the meaning of media be thought about in such a way that we acquire an understanding of our relationship to both the world and to ourselves? How can a concept of the medium be developed that encompasses our experiences using media? How can we determine what media 'are' in a way that embraces both generally accepted (voice, writing) and newer forms of media (computer, Internet)? How can media be conceptualized in a way that enables not only a reformulation of traditional philosophical questions but also a new conception of philosophy? Assuming first of all that one media concept could actually address all of these various questions, wouldn't this concept remain so abstract and general (in a bad sense), wouldn't it turn out so bare and tenuous, that it would say nothing and therefore not provide any answer at all? As in most cases, it depends on the attempt. 1 And in order to let the cat out of the bag immediately let me state that this attempt will address the question 'What is a medium?' in the context of the idea of the errand. The messenger thus represents a primal scene of media transmission. You could even say that the messenger represents the force behind these reflections on media, and my claim is that this relationship -measured against the present state of the debate over media -provides a new perspective on the phenomenon and concept of media. Isn't this a strange or downright outlandish effort? The messenger appears to be a relic of an epoch when the technical support of long-distance communication was not available, and it became obsolete with the development of the postal service or at the very least with the invention of the radio, the telegraph, and the telephone -not to mention the computer. What could the archaic institution of the messenger offer to modern media theory, whose reflections and explanations must address more advanced media? This provocative impression, which is often evoked by references to the messenger, is further reinforced by two associated preliminaries and an intruding problem: (i) First Preliminary: 'There is always an outside of media.' Messengers are heteronomous. The messenger perspective thus challenges attempts to conventionalize media as autonomous sovereign agents or the solitary The following section continues with a look at contemporary reflections on media, albeit limited to the discourses of cultural studies and philosophy. 1 The debate over media that was first articulated in the 1960s and continues to flourish today is confusing, multivocal and heterogeneous: there is no consensus in the phenomenal domain, the methodological approach or even the very concept of media. Nevertheless, through the multitude of heterogeneous voices -at least in the cultural studies camp -it is possible to perceive a certain vocal range that could be called the 'bon ton of the media debate'. This 'bon ton' involves reflecting and researching media with an attitude that is committed to a maxim of generativity. Lorenz Engell expressed this maxim with enviable clarity: 'Media are fundamentally generative.' 2 The meaning is obvious: in contrast to a marginalizing perspective, which treats media as negligible vehicles that add nothing to the messages they convey, this maxim signals a change in perspective that turns towards the media themselves rather than their contents. By shaping their contents, media fundamentally participate in the generation of messages -when not entirely producing them. Marshall McLuhan's provocative thesis 'the medium is the message' radically challenges the assumption that media are transparent and thus a secondary phenomenon that offers the most unimpeded view of the 'actual' objects of humanistic work, like 'sense', 'meaning', 'spirit', 'form', and 'content' -an assumption that had previously been taken for granted by the humanities. 3 The 'culturalization of the humanities', which was so characteristic of the outgoing twentieth century, thus found a support and a material grounding in the medialization of sense, spirit, and content. In the heterogeneous field of media theory a small common denominator is the idea that media not only relay their contents, but are also fundamentally generative. Doesn't this assumption of the shaping power of media towards their messages represent a necessary presupposition for all media theoretical efforts, insofar as these efforts would make themselves meaningless without this assumption? Where then lies the problem with the 'generative maxim'? 4 In order to trace this problem, I will now turn to philosophy.