Technology and Social Communication

Technology and Social CommunicationExploring the Gap between Technological Determinism

and Social Constructivism

Christian Katzenbach

Institute for Media and Communication StudiesFreie Universität Berlin, Germany

Young European Researchers Seminar on New Media StudiesInstitute of Journalism and Social Communication, University of Wroclaw

Wroclaw, November 17, 2009.

Introduction

Mediatization

Role of Media Technology?

Network Society

Christian Katzenbach | Technologies and Social Communication | PhD-Workshop, November 17 2009, Workshop

Media Technology

Accounts of Technology

Technological Determinism

4

Context

Media Technology

ContextContext

Context

Media Technology

ContextContext Media TechnologyContext

Context

Constructivism

Role of Media Technology?

Sociology of Science and Technology


‣ Core Interest: Technology — Action — Socio-political Structures

Insights from the Sociology of Science and Technology

Impacts of Technology on social behaviour and sectoral change1 Political and Social Construction

of Technology2‣ Technology in Use

‣ Meaning and Usage are ascribed, not determined‣ Domestication

‣ Technology Development‣ „Leitbilder“‣ Standardisation‣ Regulation

‣ Technology as functional equivalent‣ Durkheimʻs social facts‣ Hardened social action and structured

‣ Technology is Society made durable Technologies do not follow any

teleological path

Picture: clemensfranz (CC By-SA 3.0)



Hints from the Sociology of Science and Technology






‣ Technology is Society made durable



Hints from the Sociology of Science and Technology






‣ Technology is Society made durable

Co-Evolution

Resources Routines

Governance


‣Governance Frame: Regulation in a wider sense

‣ gained attention as analytical concept and practical approach

‣ Shift of focus in several dimensions:

‣ Actors: Vertical and Horizontal Extension of the traditional mode of rule-making through the nation-state

‣ Vertical: International Institutions

‣ Horizontal: Inclusion of private actors (self- and Co-Regulation)

Governance as a Theoretical Frame

Focus on new sets of actors

Christian Katzenbach | Technologies as Institutions | ECREA-Workshop, November 2009, Zurich

Discourse

Values

Competition

Legislation

Norms

ExpertiseKnowledge

Institutions

Coordination

Legitimation

MarketsFocus on new mechanisms


‣ Broad Concept of Governance: „Patterns to cope with interdependencies between actors“

‣ Structures of coordination, rather than regulation

‣ Institutions as analytical hinge

Governance and Institutions

[Institutions are] symbolic and behavioral systems containing representational, constitutive and normative rules together with regulatory mechanisms that define a common meaning system

and give rise to distinctive actors and action routines.

Scott, 1994

“


‣ Broad Concept of Governance: „Patterns to cope with interdependencies between actors“

‣ Schuppert: Structures of coordination, rather than regulation

‣ Institutions as analytical hinge

‣ They are both outcome…

‣… as well as instruments of regulation.

Governance and Institutions

Christian Katzenbach | Technologies as Institutions | ECREA-Workshop, November 2009, Zurich

Discourse

Values

Competition

Legislation

Norms

ExpertiseKnowledge

Institutions

Coordination

Legitimation

Markets(Media) Technology

Indeed, the very design of the Internet seemed technologically proof against attempts to put the genie back in the bottle. […]

[It] treats censorship like damage and routes around it.

Walker 2003

“

Lessig 2007

Politics of Media Technology

[.…] a politics deeply embedded not just within the institutions that design and distribute technologies and services, but within

the technology itself, as software products and information networks both prescribe and proscribe, configuring suppliers

and users, containing and constraining behaviour, and embodying in their algorithms and their gateways both the

normative and the seductive.

Mansell /Silverstone, 1996

“


Technology and Communication

‣ Importance of detailed look at technological and policy decisions‣ Set the frame for communication and following decisions‣ Time-lag

‣ Technologies are part of the institutional frame that individual action (communication) is embedded in‣ Interaction of user adoption and technological affordances

‣ Interplay and Interdependencies

Copyright


Selected References

‣ Berker, T., Hartmann, M., Punie, Y., & Ward, K. (Eds.). (2006). Domestication of media and technology. Maidenhead, Berkshire [u.a.]: Open Univ. Press.‣ Bijker, W. E. und Law, J. (Eds.). (1992). Shaping technology/building society : studies in

sociotechnical change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.‣ Donges, Patrick. (2007). The New Institutionalism as a theoretical foundation of media

governance. Communications, 32, 325-330. ‣ Latour, Bruno. (2007). Reassembling the social : an introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford

[u.a.]: Oxford Univ. Press.‣ Latour, Bruno. (1991). Technology is Society made durable., in: John Law (Hrsg.), A Sociology of

Monsters. London: Routledge. 103-131.‣ Lessig, Lawrence. (1999). Code and other laws of cyberspace. New York, NY: Basic Books.‣ Mansell, R. & Silverstone, R. (Eds.). (1996). Communication by design: The politics of

information and communication technologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.‣ Schuppert, Gunnar Folke. (2008). Governance: Auf der Suche nach Konturen eines "anerkannt

uneindeutigen Begriffs", in: Gunnar Folke Schuppert und Michael Zürn (Hrsg.), Governance in einer sich wandelnden Welt. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. 13-40.‣ Walker, John. (2003). "The digital imprimatur: How big brother and big media can put the internet

genie back in the bottle". Knowledge, Technology & Policy, 16(3), 24-77.‣ Winner, Langdon. (1980). "Do Artifacts Have Politics?". Daedulus, 109, 121-136.

Paying for Music Consuming Music but not Paying

Technological SettingLegal Setting

Norms and Values

Analog – Copying as ExceptionFair UseCreators



Norms and Values

Analog – Copying as ExceptionFair UseCreators



Norms and Values

Digitally Networked – Copying = UsageFair Use???Creators, but also: Rip, Mix, and Burn / Sharing

Education

Technology and Social Communication