Actor-Network Theory and Journalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Wiard
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Network Effects ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Content Management ◽  
News Production ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
The World

Actor-network theory (ANT) is a sociological approach to the world that treats social phenomena as network effects. This approach focuses on the evolution of interactions within networks over time and is useful for studying situations of change, unsettled groups, and evolving practices such as current developments in the world of journalism. Journalism is a messy and complex social practice involving various actors, institutions, and technologies, some of which are in a state of crisis or are undergoing rapid change due to digitization. ANT has gained momentum in journalism studies among researchers analyzing journalists’ relationships with the diverse agents they in contact with on a daily basis (e.g., technologies, institutions, audiences, other news producers) and the relationships between news production, circulation, and usage. ANT practitioners use a set of simple concepts referred to as an infra-language, which allows them to exchange ideas and compare interpretations while letting the actors they are studying develop their own range of concepts (i.e., to speak in their own words). These concepts include actants, actor networks, obligatory passage points, and translation. ANT also proposes a set of principles for researchers to follow. These include considering all entities as participants in a phenomenon (e.g., people can make other people do things, and objects, such as computers or institutions, can as well) and following actors as they trace associations with others. Therefore, journalism scholars who use this approach conduct qualitative studies focusing on the place of a particular technology within a network or situation by following who and what is involved and how entities connect. They collect data such as the content produced, direct observations of news production, or statements from interviews during or after the case is over. Using ANT, journalism scholars have extended their comprehension of news production by highlighting technology’s role in journalistic networks. Although journalists naturalize technologies through daily use (e.g., search engines, content management systems, cell phones, cameras, email), these tools still influence journalistic practices and outputs. ANT practitioners also consider the diversity of agents participating in news production and circulation: professional journalists, politicians, activists, and diverse commercial and noncommercial organizations. If this diversity is becoming more active and connected in this networked environment, it seems that legacy media is still an obligatory passage point for anyone willing to bring information to the general public. Recent societal changes, such as the generalization of news consumption on smartphones and the rise of platform journalism on multiple apps, indicate that ANT may be useful in the collective endeavor to provide a clear picture of what journalism is and what it will become.

scholarly journals I feel my wrist buzz. Smartbody and performative sensibility in Fitbit devices

2017 ◽  
pp. 5-17
Author(s):  
André Luiz Martins Lemos ◽  
Elias Bitencourt
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
User Community ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
The World ◽  
Community Forum ◽  
Body Care

Abstract This paper discusses the concepts of performative sensibility and smartbody. The central thesis is that performative sensibility highlights the instrumental nature of sensations in which objects act on the world. We show how the prescriptions of this new sensibility associated with wearables affect the body and subjectivity that we propose to call a smartbody. There were one hundred testimonials analyzed from the oldest thread with the greatest number of comments in the Fitbit user community forum. Quantitative tools and actor-network theory were used as a guide to assemble and analyze the corpus. The preliminary findings show that Fitbit users demonstrate particular changings in body care. Extreme behaviors, physical limits defined by system goals and quantification habits without utilizing the device are some of the examples found. These findings appear to indicate that the performative sensibility of wearables mobilizes new body performatic patterns and practices oriented by data.

Death sentencing by Zoom: An actor-network theory analysis

2020 ◽  
pp. 1037969X2096614
Author(s):  
Milena Heinsch ◽  
Tania Sourdin ◽  
Caragh Brosnan ◽  
Hannah Cootes
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Video Conferencing ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Theory Analysis ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Jury Trials ◽  
The World ◽  
Death Sentencing

During the COVID-19 pandemic, courts around the world have introduced a range of technologies to cope with social distancing requirements. Jury trials have been largely delayed, although some jurisdictions moved to remote jury approaches and video conferencing was used extensively for bail applications. While videoconferencing has been used to a more limited extent in the area of sentencing, many were appalled by the news that two people were sentenced to death via Zoom. This article uses actor-network theory (ANT) to explore the role of technology in reshaping the experience of those involved in the sentencing of Punithan Genasan in Singapore.

Actor–Network Theory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annelies Kamp
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Data Generation ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Social Studies Of Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Moment

Actor–network theory (ANT) is an approach to research that sits with a broader body of new materialism; a body of work that displaces humanism to consider dynamic assemblages of humans and nonhumans. Originally developed in the social studies of science and technology undertaken in the second half of the 20th century, ANT has increasingly been taken up in other arenas of social inquiry. Researchers working with ANT do not accept the unquestioned use of “social” explanations for educational phenomena. Rather, the social, like all other effects, is taken to be an enactment of heterogenous assemblages of human and nonhuman entities. The role of the educational researcher is to trace these processes of assemblage and reassemblage, foregrounding the ways in which certain entities establish sufficient allies to assume some degree of “realness” in the world. Aligning most closely with ethnographic orientations, ANT does not outline a method. However, it could be argued that a number of propositions are shared in ANT-inspired approaches: first, that the world is made up of actors/actants, all of which are ontologically symmetrical. Humans are not privileged in ANT. Second, the principle of irreduction—there is no essence within or beyond any process of assemblage. Actors are concrete; there is no “potential” other than their actions in the moment. Entities are nothing more than an effect of assemblage. Third, the concept of translation and its processes of mediation that transform objects when they encounter one another. Finally, the principle of alliance. Actants gain strength only through their alliances. These propositions have specific implications for data generation, analysis, and reporting.

Work Motivation in the Rhetoric of Component Content Management

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Batova
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Prosocial Behavior ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Work Motivation ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Content Management ◽  
Job Crafting ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Technical Communicators ◽  
Component Content

This article describes a 12-month qualitative study that analyzes how a company’s transition to component content management (CCM)—a set of methodologies, processes, and technologies that allows working with texts as small components rather than complete, static documents—influences the work motivation of its technical communicators. The analysis is based on actor-network theory and the theories of work motivation from economics. When technical communicators felt that CCM’s only focus was efficiency and savings and that they were not recognized and connected to the fruits of their labor, their motivation decreased. But their motivation increased when they were engaged in job crafting—reshaping their understanding of the fruits of their labor and gaining recognition through prosocial behavior.

Ability of the Actor Network Theory (ANT) to Model and Interpret an Electronic Market

2011 ◽  
pp. 109-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murat Baygeldi ◽  
Steve Smithson
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Success Factors ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Electronic Market ◽  
Trading System ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Trading Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Nature Of Information

The nature of information systems is often complex and involves both human and nonhuman components. This is particularly true in an electronic market. Actor Network Theory (ANT) can be used in general to describe the actors, intermediaries, framing and power that are the most important components of such an electronic market, which we call a network. This chapter explores whether ANT can help to analyze electronic trading systems. And if so, can ANT help us to filter the success factors of a computer trading system like Eurex, the largest derivatives electronic market in the world? It highlights how ANT is useful to define the various components involved within an electronic market. Moreover, the chapter analyses ANT’s limitations in modeling computer-trading systems. This chapter concludes that ANT is useful to analyze an electronic market such as Eurex.

scholarly journals The Politics of Explanation and Strategy of Description of Bruno Latour: How to Write Infra-reflexive Texts

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 186-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandr Shirokov
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Recording Device ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Meta Level ◽  
Specific Description ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Textual Form

The article is an attempt to interpret Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a recording device or, in other words, as a way of translating the world into a textual form. In directly posing the question of what ANT is and what it means to be an actor-network theorist, the author shows that this, first of all, means writing specific texts. If we accept such a version of what ANT is, then the question is how Latour proposes to write texts. His strategy of description is based on a certain politics of explanation. Like any other politics, the politics of explanation is based on certain principles or credo; in this case, these principles are related to the influence of the semiotics, ethnomethodology, and results of what Latour called the anthropology of the modern. This text, on the one hand, analyzes how Latour selectively borrows elements of semiotics and ethnomethodology in developing his policy of explanation. On the other hand, the author shows how this politics of explanation is implemented in practice in a specific description strategy. The author concludes that Latour’s politics of explanation and the subsequent description strategy presupposes an average path between two extremes. The first extreme is the output to the meta level, and the second is the use of only the explanations of the actors themselves. This middle path consists of the development of certain principles of description that would not lead either to the replacement of the language of actors by the language of a sociologist, or to a simple repetition of the language of actors. The ANT infra-language does not say anything meaningful about the world, but, in a certain way, organizes a description of the world as it is as an empty template which must be re-applied each time. It is for this reason that it is possible for historical, ethnographic, and mixed ANT-research.

Plasma! Notes on Bruno Latour’s Metaphysics of Law

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent de Sutter
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
The Real ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern System ◽  
Neutral Mode ◽  
Real Composition

Here, Laurent de Sutter poses a direct challenge to a principal tenet of Latour’s metaphysics: Latour’s commitment to empiricity, positivity and above all the trace by which alone an actor is grasped in actor-network theory. De Sutter embraces Latour’s argument about the ontological openness or generosity of law – it is the only mode, de Sutter reminds us, capable of seizing any being whatsoever and attaching it to an utterance or an action and thereby registering its agency and, importantly, rendering it compossible with beings of quite other pedigrees. As such, law is the only ‘ontologically neutral’ mode, but there is much more at stake than the harmonics of existential modes, namely the real composition of worlds and, indeed, of what must be defined as the unworldly: ‘all that exists only as non-existing’, ‘all that is present only as absent’, or again, ‘all that has form only as unformed’. These missing masses that Latour occasionally acknowledges, de Sutter argues, escape from the tendrils of the networks that define the real and the knowable, but enjoy something more than a mere negative or emptily theoretical existence. For Latour, plasma is simply the ‘dumping ground’ where he deposits the things that do not awaken his interest, a realm of obscurity that must be set off from the world of which clear and distinct representations are possible. To undo this surprisingly Cartesian tendency in Latour, perhaps, de Sutter suggests, it would be possible to recover plasma as the genus to which Deleuze’s dark precursor would belong. If there is identity, similitude, resemblance, traceability, in short the whole modern system of representation, it is only as a plasmatic excrescent. As a first step along this path, de Sutter makes a pitch for the recovery of what he calls the beings of sensitivity, which may affect other beings profoundly but which themselves leave no measurable trace.

STRUCTURING A SUCCESSFUL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER PROCESS: A CASE STUDY FROM THE PERSPECTIVES OF ACTOR NETWORK THEORY

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huda Ibrahim ◽  
Hasmiah Kasimin
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Technology Transfer ◽  
Transfer Process ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Local Market ◽  
Private Company ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Technology Transfer Process

An effi cient and effective information technology transfer from developed countries to Malaysia is an important issue as a prerequisite to support the ICT needs of the country to become not only a ICT user but also a ICT producer. One of the factors that infl uences successful information technology transfer is managing the process of how technology transfer occurs in one environment. It involves managing interaction between all parties concerned which requires an organized strategy and action toward accomplishing technology transfer objective in an integrated and effective mode. Using a conceptual framework based on the Actor Network Theory (ANT), this paper will analyse a successful information technology transfer process at a private company which is also a supplier of information technology (IT) products to the local market. This framework will explain how the company has come up with a successful technology transfer in a local environment. Our study shows that the company had given interest to its relationships with all the parties involved in the transfer process. The technology transfer programme and the strategy formulated take into account the characteristics of technology and all those involved.  

The Action of Christian Buildings on their Chinese Environment

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-121
Author(s):  
Michel Chambon
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Active Part ◽  
Architectural Style ◽  
Actor Network

This article explores the ways in which Christians are building churches in contemporary Nanping, China. At first glance, their architectural style appears simply neo-Gothic, but these buildings indeed enact a rich web of significances that acts upon local Christians and beyond. Building on Actor-Network Theory and exploring the multiple ties in which they are embedded, I argue that these buildings are agents acting in their own right, which take an active part in the process of making the presence of the Christian God tangible.

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