Communication, Technology, Temporality

Advances in media, entertainment and the arts (AMEA) book series, 2017

In the network society and the age of media convergence, media production can no longer be isolated into channels, formats, technologies, and organizations. Media Studies is facing the challenge to reconceptualize its foundations. It could therefore be claimed that new media are the last media. In the case of digital versus analog, there is no continuity between new media and old media. A new and promising proposal has come from German scholars who attempt the precarious balance between media theory and a general theory of mediation based on Actor-Network Theory. Under the title of Actor-Media Theory (Akteur-Medien-Theorie) these thinkers attempt to reformulate the program of Media Studies beyond assumptions of social or technical determinism. Replacing Actor-Network Theory with Actor-Media Theory raises the question of whether exchanging the concept of "network" for the concept of "media" is methodologically and theoretically advantageous.

Revista nuestrAmérica, 2018

Internet connectivity and the media are immersed in different aspects of our lives, sometimes in our daily activities and sometimes at specific moments. However, this condition of naturalness or obviousness is much more complex and diversified because several aspects are combined. The first is the type of access, which corresponds to the infrastructures and public policies that allow or hinder their access and use by individuals and groups. This aspect is more marked in populations that have historically been in conditions of inequality (indigenous communities, rural environments, segregated neighborhoods, ethnic minorities, among others). Mediations are another aspect, they can range from people who serve as a link between other people and technologies, going through the proposals and orientations of civil organizations, to symbolic figures such as hackers that expand the possibilities of the uses and appropriations of the Information and Communication Technologies. In conjunction ...

There have been many recent attempts to bring insights from science and technology studies (STS) into media disciplines, many of which associate this work with materiality and technology, while existing media theories are used to analyse the domain of media content and political economy. While this is a reasonable settlement, in this paper I will suggest an alternative arrangement based around controversies. Controversies, and related empirical objects, can help break down dichotomies like producer/audience, social/technical, content/material and also provoke questions such as ‘which media technologies matter in a given case?’ However, controversies are often specific to science so I propose a type of study based around ‘mediated events’ (drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers). I illustrate this with the case of the Woolwich attacks on Twitter. While this approach does not deliver a comprehensive theory of the media, it proposes a new settlement between STS and media studies, grounded in the empirical rather than high theory.

he general question of how our human desires can be supported by media technologies has produced a fairly constant endeavour in human history -and still does, for example in the shape of transhumanist hopes and aspirations. Over time, these desires have often driven development towards an, in the end, materialized technology. Many times, however, the desires have also not resulted in a physical product, but rather remained as ideas, conceptual sketches, or lo-fi prototypes. This essay will examine how such imaginary media technologies can be defined and categorized, why they are important to study, and how the underlying desires seem to be revitalized across centuries and decades. Such questions are of interest to transhumanism as they illustrate how desires, temporal relations, and human-technology relationships have been (and are) imagined both in the past, the present, and towards the future 1 . So, while this essay is not a media archaeological excavation of transhumanist imaginary media only (which would be an interesting project in itself), it is a media genealogy of historically recurring desires to extend, substitute and enhance the human body and mind. This essay will make use of two typologies to explore desires and temporal relations in relation to media technologies. Firstly, 1 Gardner and Wray, 2013.

Abstract.- This paper has two main objectives: a) it intends to explore the extension of mediatization as both an objective ‘sociotechnical’ media phenomenon and as a subjective process. The interdependence between both is realized through the association of perception, imagination and construction of meaning. b) The second objective is to propose a sheme –or model- of communication, and the possible range of research applications and analysis the proposed ‘sociocommunicational’ framework can deliver for understanding the complexity of mediatization processes both from a technological and a psychosociological point of view. For research, the model can be articulated or ‘crossed’ by different sociosymbolic dimensions and categories which I will expose, intending to construct a common conceptual framework of analysis for construction of meaning in social life as well as in different media contexts and processes. I will compare everyday life non mediated human communication, to mediated contexts of communication as television reception, and to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT’s, specially Internet). At first, I will present a “model”, intending to interpret the relations between meaning and communication. Secondly I intend to compare the “functioning” of both processes using the theoretical categories in a “subject-television” context, compared to a “subject-Internet” context. Keywords: mediatization; model (scheme) of communication; lifeworlds; production of meaning.-

ABSTRACT: In the present article, the author attempts to illustrate phenomena occurring in the sphere of human communication and integrate them into the speci!ic model. It would not be an overall description of the complex ecosystem of interpersonal communication, but rather the next brick added to the continuously expanding edi!ice of scienti!ic re!lection on communicating and the media. Thus, for the purposes of this study the author suggests the use of a term ‘intersphere’, derived from geometry. The author is convinced that the situation, in which the media are prevalent in every area of human life, is properly described. As for the linguistic analysis of the word ‘intersphere’, the author examines its possible references to the mediasphere theory, formulated by the Polish media researcher, Bp. Adam Lepa, and divided into logosphere, iconosphere, galenosphere and sonosphere. In the further study, he endeavors to investigate the extent, to which the perception of the media as the intersphere of human existence cooperates with – recently extremely popular and gaining more supporters – the theory of mediatization of various areas of life. It seems that (despite lexical similarities between the concepts of ‘mediosphere’ and ‘intersphere’) the comprehension of the media in terms of the intersphere of human life is much closer to the theory of mediatization; it constitutes as if the other side of this theory and hence, can perfectly complement it. KEY WORDS: intersphere, mass media, mediatization, mediasphere, logosphere, galenosphere, sonosphere, iconosphere

The present contribution maps materialist advances in media studies. Based on the assumption that matter and materiality constitute significant aspects of communication processes and practices, I introduce four fields of inquiry – technology, political economy and labour, the body, and ecology – and argue that these perspectives enable more comprehensive understandings of the implications of contemporary, technologically afforded forms of interaction. The article shows how each perspective can balance apologetic and apocalyptic approaches to the impact of, in particular, digital technologies, before it demonstrates the applicability of an integrated framework with reference to the techno-politics of NSA surveillance and the counter-practices of WikiLeaks. Acknowledgement: I would like to express my gratitude to Christian Fuchs and two anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback and valuable suggestions.

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.