Epilogue: The Ventriloquism of Media

Historically, media studies and interaction studies have been estranged from each other. As John Durham Peters noted, this unfortunate situation can be traced back to the quarrel between the Sophists and Socrates, which can be summarized as the perennial opposition between the doctrine of dissemination, today represented by media studies, and the doctrine of dialogue, represented by interaction studies. This chapter calls this opposition into question by proposing to study media from a ventriloquial perspective. Communication is not only a question of co-construction and co-orientation, aspects on which interaction studies often focus, but also of delegation and tele-action, aspects that highlight the mediated dimension of any communicative act. The chapter illustrates the value of this perspective by providing an in-depth analysis of a videorecorded conflict mediation session. More specifically, it shows how a mediator acts as a medium in third-party dispute resolution by giving each party an opportunity to recognize their interests and positions in the other’s expressed interests and positions. The mediator thus acts as a ventriloquist who aims to help parties say things that reflect the compatibility of their respective interests, which seem incompatible at the onset of the mediation.