Bringing the Sociology of Media Back In
In: Political communication: an international journal, Band 21, Heft 3, S. 275-292
ISSN: 1091-7675
In: Political communication: an international journal, Band 21, Heft 3, S. 275-292
ISSN: 1091-7675
In: Political communication, Band 21, Heft 3, S. 275-292
ISSN: 1058-4609
In: International studies review, Band 21, Heft 1, S. 1–11
ISSN: 1468-2486
Recent studies of media and security continue to be limited by various theoretical and ontological commitments, despite their claims of "moving beyond" or "reconsidering" the CNN effect. In this article, I review the two dominant research paradigms for media and security. The first research paradigm, which includes the CNN-effect literature, imagines media as an independent actor in the policy-making process. The second research paradigm portrays media as a neutral channel, passing along the message of foreign policy elites. Each of these paradigms remains wedded to an actor-centered and choice-theoretic approach to media and security, as witnessed by recent attempts to study the CNN effect. I argue that a new research paradigm based on relational sociology actually moves media and security studies beyond the CNN effect and resolves the fundamental theoretical limitations associated with it.
World Affairs Online
In: International studies review, Band 21, Heft 1, S. 1-11
ISSN: 1468-2486
In: Society Now
The British post-war campaign to ban American horror comics neatly illustrates many of the pitfalls of media research. It is the first case-study used by David Barrat as he reviews this rapidly growing field of sociology. He gives a clear account of how and why sociologists have studied the media, looking in particular at the arguments about the effects of television, video, comics, newspapers, and radio on their audiences.He explains how media organizations work, how 'news' is manufactured, and what the political and commercial constraints can be. He discusses the likely impact on new technol
In: Political communication: an international journal, Band 21, Heft 3, S. 305-307
ISSN: 1091-7675
In: Political communication, Band 21, Heft 3, S. 305-308
ISSN: 1058-4609
In: Studies in media and communications volume 18
In: Perspectives on politics, Band 15, Heft 3, S. 771-780
ISSN: 1541-0986
I informally examine how the idea of public sociology has been affected by the rise of social media. New social media platforms disintermediate communication, make people more visible, and encourage public life to be measured. They tend to move the discipline from a situation where some people self-consciously do "public sociology" to one where more sociologists unselfconsciously do sociology in public. I discuss the character of such "latently public" work, the opportunities and difficulties it creates for individuals, and its tendency to be associated with academic fields that believe in what they are doing.
In: Media, Culture & Society, Band 34, Heft 6, S. 673-690
ISSN: 1460-3675
This article examines the curious interplay between media sociology and Science and Technology Studies (STS). Recent media research is increasingly drawn to STS, while STS analysts are increasingly drawn to research media technologies. While it is routine practice in STS to stress the 'materiality' of the objects under investigation, media technologies pose a challenge to this. Their 'materiality' is difficult to distinguish from their communicative/symbolic dimensions, the latter often being misframed as ideal/immaterial. By contrast, media research traditions have thought through these issues in terms of the concept of articulation and the related conceptual legacy of aesthetic modernism. While far more attentive to the specificity of 'the symbolic', these frameworks have been only partly informed by macro-social theoretical reflection. Here we advocate Calhoun's placement of communications within his 'infrastructure of modernity' as the most suitable overarching framework for discussion of this border communication. However, Calhoun's framework itself can benefit from re-invigoration by the socio-technical insights of both traditions.