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Media and Communication: New Technologies and Definitions

This guest lecture explores the impact of new technologies on the definitions and understanding of media and communication. It discusses the history of media and introduces the concept of media of three degrees. It also examines contemporary theory and its relationship with historical hindsight. The lecture delves into the communicative functions of media, the availability and accessibility of information, and the performativity of social action. The case of climate change is used to highlight the importance of communication and its role in shaping our understanding of global issues.

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Media and Communication: New Technologies and Definitions

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  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

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