Media of three degrees

Dias 1

Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication

Media of three degrees

Guest lecture

IT UniversityCopenhagen, April 8, 2008

Klaus Bruhn [email protected]


Dias 2

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?


Dias 3

’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)


Dias 4

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


Dias 5

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”


Dias 6

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


Dias 7

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


Dias 8

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


Dias 9

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))


Dias 10

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


Dias 11


Media of the first degree

Media of the second degree

Media of the third degree


Dias 12

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


Dias 13

References

Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (2nd ed.). London: Verso.

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. London: Granada. Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality. London: Allen Lane. Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of

Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). Briggs, A., & Burke, P. (2005). A social history of the media: From gutenberg to the internet (2nd ed.).

Cambridge: Polity. Eisenstein, E. L. (1979). The printing press as an agent of change: Communication and cultural transformation

in early-modern europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finnemann, N. O. (2005). Internettet i mediehistorisk perspektiv. København: Samfundslitteratur. Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory. London: Macmillan. Goody, J., & Watt, I. (1963). The consequences of literacy. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5, 304-

345. Lamb, H. H. (1995). Climate, history, and the modern world (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B., & Gaudet, H. (1944). The people's choice. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce. Meyrowitz, J. (1994). Medium theory. In D. Crowley & D. Mitchell (Eds.), Communication theory today.

Cambridge: Polity Press. Peters, J. D. (1999). Speaking into the air: A history of the idea of communication. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press. Porat, M. (1977). The information economy: Definition and measurement. Washington, D.C.: Government

Printing Office.

Dias 14



Klaus Bruhn [email protected]

Documents

Media of three degrees