John Thompson: The media and modernity.

A social theory of the media

1. Communication and social context
Communication media Social + technical dimensions. Always a contextualised social phenomenon: embedded in social contexts, with structuring impact on communication Communication as a form of action. But Austin does not contextualise communication and speech acts. Social phenomena as purposive actions carried out in structured social contexts. Within fields of interaction (> Bourdieu). > Power Communication: a distinctive kind of social activity: production, transmission and reception of symbolic forms. Involves the implementation of technical meida; the material substratum of symbolic forms. 1. Degree of fixation of the symbolic form > storing capacity 2. > Allows for reproduction 3. Space-time distanciation 4. Encoding and decoding skills First on the problematic aspects with the term mass communication/mass media. However to refer to the institutionalized production and generalized diffusion of symbolic goods via the fixation and transmission of information or symbolic content. Not unique to mass communication, but set of features typical and important. 1. Technical and institutional means of production and diffusion 2. Commodification of symbolic forms 3. Structured break between production and reception of symbolic forms 4. Extends the availability of symbolic forms in space and time 5. The public circulation of symbolic forms. Products available to a plurality of recipients. Despatialized simultaneity: simultaneity does not necessarily presupposed locality. how individuals experience spatial and temporal aspects of life, > Meyorwitz: no sense of place. How individuals experience the past and and the world beyond their immediate milieu. Mediated historicity and worldliness. Peoples sense of belonging. Mediated sociality. 1. Structuralism, semiotics and co. 2. Earlier empirical traditions of media research 3. Later various approaches using a variety of methods. Routine and practical activity. Situated activity: located in specific social-historical contexts. Integral part of everyday life.

Austin: speech act theory Here:

Uses of communication media

General aspect and attributes of communication media

Characteristics of mass communication

The reordering of space and time

Communication, appropriation and everyday life Reception as routine

Skilled accomplishment Hermeneutic process > Meaning

Extremely diverse, but generally based on learning. May be socially differentiated. Process of interpretations. Gadamer: not a presuppositionless activity, but an active, creative process. According to individual interpretations. Complex, shifting phenomenon. Also part of reflection, and self-reflection. Self-formation and self-understanding. Constructing a sense of self.

3. The rise of mediated interaction

Development of communication media > affecting patterns of social interaction. Not simply new networks of relationships transmissions, but creates new forms of action and interaction. Separated from physical locale.

Three types of interaction Face-to-face Mediated interaction

Mediated quasi-interaction

Rise of mediated interaction

The social organization of mediated quasiinteraction Communication media Technically mediated quasi-interaction Three sets of space-time coordinates

Face-to-face; mediated; mediated quasi-interaction Context of co-presence. Consequences for type of interaction. Saturated with multiplicity of symbolic cues. Letter writing and telephone conversations. And obviously a lot more today than Thompson mentions. Involves the use of a technical medium, narrowing of symbolic cues. Individuals more dependent on their own interpretations and contexts. Social relations established by mass media. Produced for an indefinite range of potential recipients. Monological interaction. Thompson emphesises that these situations blur, but it must be said that these crude typification is even more problematic than before, that is, mostly relations between mediated and mediated quasi-interaction > paper on conceptualising personal media. Thompson, however, does take precautions, such as further development of new communication technologies. My point is still valid, Thompsons typification might be too crude. Not necessarily at the expense of face-to-face interaction. But modern social life increasingly made up of forms of interaction, which are not f2f. The interactoin mix of social life has changed (: 87). References to Erving Goffmans presentation of self: front and back regions. Individuals constantly adapting behaviour to shifting boundaries. Profound impact on nature of front and back regions and relations between them. Symbolic forms produced in one context, and received in multiplicity of other contexts. 1. space-time coordinates of the context of production 2. of the televisual message itself 3. of the diverse contexts of reception Space-time interpolation: continuous process of splicing together these three sets of coordinates. Example: viewing television: recipients splicing togheter the different sets of space-time coordinates. Structural asymmetry between producers and receivers. No reflexive monitoring of the others responses. Recepients at liberty not to pay attention. Quasi-participation.

Monological character

The established social relationships

Action at a distance (1): Acting for distant others (2): Responsive action in distant contexts Extended mediazation

Concerted forms of responsive action

New social and political field More complicated patterns

Tele-visibility, combines audio-visual presence with spatiotemporal distance. Personalities whose traits are defined largely within the front-region of the production sphere. Recipients, anonymous and invisible spectators of performace. Nevertheless crucial for producers. 1. Recipient address: direct and indirect 2. Mediated everyday activity 3. Media events 4. Fictionalized action Discursive elaboration: the responsive actions are not part of the quasi-intreraction as such, but refined and commented in the context of the recipients. Media messages are re-mediated, self-referentiality. Appropriation of the media messages. According to social attributes of the audience, varies. 1. Concerted but uncoordinated responsive action 2. Explicitly intended coordinated recipient response (laughter boxes) 3. Organized or coordinated responsive action (anti-war movements, Eastern Europe 1989), Media not simply reporting from the world actively involved in constituting the social and political world. Shape the course of events. New kind of field: f2f interaction, mediated interaction, mediated quasi-interaction intersecting in complex ways. > Contributes in the complexity and unpredictability of the modern world.

7. Self and experience in a mediated world

Modernity Reflexive and open-ended self-formation. Non-local knowledge. The capacity of experience disconnected from the activity of encountering. How related mediated experiences to the practical contexts of our day-to-day lives? Thompson claims to represent an account of the self fundamentally different from that of structural linguistics etc, such as Althusser and Foucaults: techniques of the self: the ways in which individuals are turned into subjects whi think and act in accordance with the possibilities that are laid out in advance. However, is Thompsons perspective very different from that of Foucault? The self as a symbolic project that the individual actively constructs. A narrative of self-identity. Unofficial biographers of ourself (the link to Foucault here seems evident?). > The importance of the development of communication media: the process of self-formation dependent on acvcess to mediated forms of communication. Enriches and accenturates the reflexive organization of the self. Coherent and continuosly revised biographical narrative.

The self as a symbolic project

A hermeneutics-inspired perspective Communication media

Negative consequences

Non-reciprocal intimacy at a distance Desequestration and the mediation of experience Hermeneutics and phenomenological trad.

Mediated quasi-interaction

New options, new burdens: living in a mediated world

1. The mediated intrusion of ideological messages into the practical contexts of everyday life. Thompsons accont of ideology; the ways in which symbolic forms serve to establish and sustain relations of domination. The role of the media in such ideological processes. How these messages are incorporated into the lives of the recipients. 2. The double-bind of mediated dependency: It renders this reflexive organization increasingly dependent on systems over which the individual has relatively little control. Part of the whole modern societies thing. See also Ulrich Beck: individualization and institutionalization. 3. The disorienting effect of symbolic overload: the confrontation of countless narratives of self-formation and visions of world. Necessitates a selective approach. The importance of significant others (Katz & Lazarsfel, Radway). The interplay of complexity and expertise. 4. The absorption of self in mediated quasi-interaction: individuals relying too heavily on mediated symbolic materials. > opportunity to explore interpersonal relationships in a vicarious way. Extensive on fan-culture. Complex reordering of spheres of experience. Institutional sequestration of experience co-developing with the massive expansion of mediated forms of experience. Also makes available new forms of experiences. Following Dilthey. Distinction between two types of experience: 1. Lived experience (Erlebnis): situated, real-life experiences. Not mediated through technical media. 2. Mediated experience: acquired through mediated interaction and mediated quasi-interaction 1. Mediated experiences are distant spatially. Unlikely to impinge directly on the recipients lives. 2. Takes place in a context which is different from the context in which the event actually occurs. Recontextualised experience. 3. Relevance structure. Mediated experiences as a discontinous sequence of experiences with varying degrees of relevance to the self. 4. Despatialized communality. No longer linked to a sharing of a common locale. Thompson claims to present a view of the self that differs from that of much postmodern theory (the dissolved self). Still transformed conditions of self-formation. The self: reflexively organized symbolic project, increasingly unconstrained by location in context of day-to-day life. The self as opened up by media messages. Living as a continuous interweaving of different forms of experience. New opportunities, options, arenas for self-experimenting.