Media of three degrees

1. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Media of three degrees Guest lecture IT University Copenhagen, April 8, 2008 Klaus Bruhn Jensen Professor kbj@hum.ku.dk

2. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Preview • New technologies ---> new definitions of ’media’ and ’communication’ • Systematics with a history: how many periods of media history? • Media of three degrees • Human media, mass media, network media • Contemporary theory - and historical hindsight • Media types and communicative functions • Availability - information • Accessibility - communicators • Performativity - social action • Case: climate change • We communicate for our lives... • ...but how do we know? • ...and what can we do about it?

3. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication ’Media’ and ’communication’ • What’s in a term? • ’Communication’ • General notion since mid-1800s • ”mass communication came first” (Peters, 1999)... • ...what comes after mass communication? • What’s in a name? • IAMCR • 1957: International Association for Mass Communication Research • 1996: International Association for Media and Communication Research • Double hermeneutics • (Social) sciences redefine conceivable realities - with practical consequences (Marx, Freud) (Giddens, 1979) • Media as publicly accessible resources conditioning the social construction of reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966)

4. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Three classic concepts • Information • ...a difference that makes a difference (Bateson, 1972) • ...data that have been organized and communicated (Porat, 1977) • Meta-information: principles of organization • Communication • Discursive practices that articulate meaning and orient agency • Meta-communication: relationships between communicators in contexts of action (Bateson, 1955) • Action • Communication as action (speech acts, Austin 1962) • Action as communication (from non-verbal interaction to 9/11) • Communication anticipating action - the necessary end of doubt, delay, and deliberation

5. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Case: climate change • Climate change... • ...only articulated as public issue from c. 1960 (Lamb, 1995) • ...people acting locally on the basis of available and accessible information • ...raises the stakes of communication to the global level of the human species • Availability • Data on: tree rings, ice cores, grain prices, wine harvests • Sources on: everyday life and social change • Accessibility • Multiple registers and steps of communication: ’translation’ of findings for public use • Simple Google search (February 21, 2008) • ”climate change”: only ’green’ and ’official’ voices in Top 20 • ”global warming”: ’green’ as well as ’skeptical’ voices in Top 20 • - search terms as meta-information framing accessible information • Performativity • Naming as meta-communication for organization and action: • globalwarming.net: Extreme Event Index • globalwarming.org: ”reasoned thinking comes from cooler heads”

6. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Communicative functions of media • Availability • Articulation of information in specific forms (or not) • Ex: scientific data on global warming • Accessibility • Communication makes information accessible in contexts of deliberation and action • Ex: representation and debate - media, schools, archives, etc. • Performativity • Information as communicated constitutes a resource of action at the micro, meso, and macro levels of social structure • Ex: consumer habits, environmental organizations, corporate social responsibility, international treaties

7. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Media of the third degree • Availability • Digitalization as structural condition of the strategic role of information in material production and social governance - ’a networked information economy’ (Benkler, 2006) • Accessibility • Internet = global archive + immediate distribution (Finnemann, 2005) - ’mass medium’ • Reciprocal accessibility: meta-information and meta-communication by common user - ’interpersonal medium’ • Performativity • Micro coordination of everyday social relations • Meso organization of, e.g., e-banking and e-government • Macro configuration of political, cultural, and economic institutions

8. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Media of the second degree • Availability • Mechanical reproduction of information as structural condition of modern forms of science and politics - ’Renaissance and Reformation’ (Eisenstein, 1979) • Accessibility • Standardized resources as disseminated across time and space • Social stratification and/vs. universal market • Performativity • Mass communication as source of socialization and institutionalization - ’imagined communities’ (Anderson, 1983) • Public opinion as indirect resource of political participation

9. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Media of the first degree • Availability • Aliquid stat pro aliquo - reference and reflexivity • Multimodal body as structural condition of human civilization • Accessibility • Communication as event rather than representation • Information as resource in local time and space • Performativity • Tradition as process - reproduction of worldviews and instruments (Goody & Watt, 1963) • Cumulation of contextual interactions (e.g., two-step flow, Lazarsfeld et al., 1944; online social networking that extends offline networks (boyd & Ellison, 2007))

10. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Periodization revisited • Medium theory (Meyrowitz, 1994) • Oral, scribal, print, electronic cultures • Media history with hindsight • After 1994:digital culture as add-on? • ’Manuscript media’? • Externalization and fixation of available information • Secondary, selective accessibility: mediated literacy (Briggs & Burke, 2005: 27) (downward dissemination) • Performativity as transformative capacity - at systemic level (Benkler 2006: individual as moral, cultural agent) • Electronic vs. print media? • Degrees of simultaneity, multimodality, and flow of information • Mass accessibility to 2 types of standardized resources • Limited performativity in relation to public resources of articulation and participation

11. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Media of three degrees

12. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Review • From ’media’ to ’communication’ • New technologies ---> new definitions of ’media’ and ’communication’ • Beyond technological convergence - communicative differentiation • Communicative functions • Availability - information • Accessibility - communicators • Performativity - social action • Media of three degrees • Human media, mass media, and network media in new cultural configuration • Communication across online / offline and mediated / unmediated categories • We have always been converged, communicating via any and all material resources being afforded in context • Periodization of media history • Periods: 3, 5, 1 per medium or media type... • Humans as media: primary, secondary, and tertiary orality

13. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication References

14. Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication Media of three degrees Klaus Bruhn Jensen Professor kbj@hum.ku.dk