Suchergebnisse

Der Autor wagt sich – wie viele vor ihm – daran, eine "allgemeine Medientheorie" formulieren zu wollen und scheitert – wie ebenso viele vor ihm – an den grundlegenden Aporien der Moderne. Sein Versuch, oppositionelle wissenschaftstheoretische Ansätze wie Systemtheorie und Poststrukturalismus interdisziplinär zu versöhnen und fruchtbar zu machen, verläuft sich in außergewöhnlicher Präzision, die letztendlich aber zur Redundanz ausartet. Ein kritischer und strenger Lektor hätte diesem opus doctum sed non docendum wahrscheinlich gut getan ... Schade, die Ausgangsüberlegung von Mathias Spohr nämlich besticht durch Originalität: Die "Per-version" der Maßstäbe des Messens von einem Divinum zu einem Humanum und letztendlich zum Digitalum begründe medial die Paradoxien der Moderne und per-vertiere den Menschen letztendlich vom homo universalis zum homo functionalis.

This article puts forward a theory of the role of digital media in social change. It begins by criticizing three theories that currently dominate our understanding of digital media and of media generally: network theory, mediatization theory and actor-network theory. It also identifies a gap in current communication theory, namely, that digital media mostly do not fit the divide into mass and interpersonal communication. A further problem is that insufficient attention is given to the difference between political communication and popular culture or everyday life. The article develops an alternative, focusing on four countries that provide a range of relationships between media and society; the U.S., Sweden, India and China. In all four countries, despite their differences, digital media, in contrast to traditional broadcast and interpersonal media, have led to a more differentiated media landscape. Greater complexity in political communication nevertheless runs up against the continuing dominance of elite agenda-setting. In terms of popular culture, all four countries have experienced a proliferation of media offerings and greater tetheredness between people. Hence, new divides are emerging between more active and variegated as against more passive and restricted media uses. The article concludes with implications of digital media for understanding media generally: with new digital media, there is now a need to rethink media theory in terms of fundamental debates about how media transform or preserve the social order.

Matthias Vogel challenges the belief, promoted by many contemporary philosophers, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In his view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason—music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant factors. Introducing an expansive theory of the mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, Vogel advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its attachment to linguistics. Vogel's media of rationality treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and non-propositional, as important contributions to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, he raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, Vogel rebuilds if not remakes the relationship among various forms of media—books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television—while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory.

Now in its fourth edition, Media Effects again features essays from some of the finest scholars in the field and serves as a comprehensive reference volume for scholars, teachers, and students. This edition contains both new and updated content that reflects our media-saturated environments, including chapters on social media, video games, mobile communication, and virtual technologies. In recognition of the multitude of research trajectories within media effects, this edition also includes new chapters on narratives, positive media, the self and identity, media selection, and cross-cultural media effects. As scholarship in media effects continues to evolve and expand, Media Effects serves as a benchmark of theory and research for the current and future generations of scholars.The book is ideal for scholars and for undergraduate and graduate courses in media effects, media psychology, media theory, psychology, sociology, political science, and related disciplines.

Now in its fourth edition, Media Effects again features essays from some of the finest scholars in the field and serves as a comprehensive reference volume for scholars, teachers, and students. This edition contains both new and updated content that reflects our media-saturated environments, including chapters on social media, video games, mobile communication, and virtual technologies. In recognition of the multitude of research trajectories within media effects, this edition also includes new chapters on narratives, positive media, the self and identity, media selection, and cross-cultural media effects. As scholarship in media effects continues to evolve and expand, Media Effects serves as a benchmark of theory and research for the current and future generations of scholars.The book is ideal for scholars and for undergraduate and graduate courses in media effects, media psychology, media theory, psychology, sociology, political science, and related disciplines.

Broken Theory is a jettisoned collection of fragmentary writing, collected and collaged by new media artist, writer, musician, and theorist Alan Sondheim. Folding theoretical musings, text experiments, and personal confessions into a single textual flow, it examines the somatic foundations of philosophical theory and theorizing, discussing their relationships to the writer and body, and to the phenomenology of failure and fragility of philosophy's production. Writing remains writing, undercuts and corrects itself, is always superseded, always produced within an untoward and bespoke silo – not as an inconceivable last word, but instead a broken contribution to philosophical thinking. The book is based on fragmentation and collapse, displacing annihilation and wandering towards a form of "roiling" within which the text teeters on the verge of disintegration. In other words, the writing develops momentary scaffoldings – writing shored up by the very mechanisms that threaten its disappearance.

Broken Theory is prefaced by a text from Maria Damon and followed by an extensive interview with art historian Ryan Whyte.

This chapter focuses specifically on how the news media influence perceptions of societal problems. This research question is discussed and reviewed in three ways. First, to better understand the context and contingencies of media effects on societal perceptions specifically, the outcome variable is related to the broader literature on sociotropic beliefs and cognitive schema theory. Second, classic theories of media effects focusing on societal perceptions are reviewed. The relevance and viability of these theories are discussed in light of the dramatic media environmental transformations of the last two decades. Third, a model of conditional media effects on sociotropic beliefs in contemporary high-choice media environments is proposed and discussed. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for future research on media effects on sociotropic beliefs.

This book offers a plea to take the materiality of media technologies and the sensorial and tacit dimensions of media use into account in the writing of the histories of media and technology. In short, it is a bold attempt to question media history from the perspective of an experimental media archaeology approach. It offers a systematic reflection on the value and function of hands-on experimentation in research and teaching.Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Theory is the twin volume to Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Practice, authored by Tim van der Heijden and Aleksander Kolkowski

The article draws firstly on theories that question the exclusionary nature of mass communication in terms of the emancipatory potential of 'new media'; of the democratization of communication; or even in terms of advancing alternative forms of communication. By probing specifically into various small-scale, decentralised media projects, issues concerning the social as well as the cultural context of their implementation; their creation, production and dissemination; the employment of new technologies; and, instances of the very mediation process itself, across both the production and reception process, are addressed. From the perspective of a non-essentialist account of such media projects, the paper draws finally on approaches that evaluate these projects on the grounds of their 'lived experience', in terms of their social actors, agents; acknowledging thus an overall framework of understanding the practice of such projects, as instances of the constitution of citizenship.

Chapter 1: Normative press theories and the revisiting of media roles in Africa's changing socio-economic and political contexts -- Chapter 2: Theorizing African Journalism: The reportage of China's maritime Silk road initiative in four Afrian newspapers -- Chapter 3: Legislative Control and Native Metaphors in Social Media Interactions in Africa: Making liberal press theories functional in the continent -- Chapter 4: Understanding Critical and Cultural theories: An African perspective -- Chapter 5: Towards an alternative model: Theorising newspaper review as Secondary Gatekeeping by Broadcast Stations in Africa -- Chapter 6: Theories from the Communication Field: A Family Communication Perspective -- Chapter 7: Media and Public Opinion in West Africa: An interplay of Agenda Setting, Agenda Building and Framing theories -- Chapter 8: Exploring 'omniscience theory' as a theoretical framework in journalism practice -- Chapter 9: Application of theories in film techniques and productions in Africa -- Chapter 10: Espousing a Multi-Sieve Model for Conflict Sensitive Reporting in Africa -- Chapter 11: Theorizing the power of celebrities in the media landscape of Africa -- Chapter 12: Health communication models, theories and their applications in Africa -- Chapter 13: The role of the media in the management of pandemics in Africa: Apllication of selected health communication theories -- Chapter 14: Contextualizing the Technology Acceptance Model for Application in Health Communication in Africa.

Media are fundamental to our sense of living in a social world. Since the beginning of modernity, media have transformed the scale on which we act as social beings. And now in the era of digital media, media themselves are being transformed as platforms, content, and producers multiply. Yet the implications of social theory for understanding media and of media for rethinking social theory have been neglected; never before has it been more important to understand those implications. This book takes on this challenge. Drawing on Couldry's fifteen years of work on media and social theory, this book explores how questions of power and ritual, capital and social order, and the conduct of political struggle, professional competition, and everyday life, are all transformed by today's complex combinations of traditional and 'new' media. In the concluding chapters Couldry develops a framework for global comparative research into media and for thinking collectively about the ethics and justice of our lives with media. The result is a book that is both a major intervention in the field and required reading for all students of media and sociology. Nick Couldryis professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London.