scholarly journals Advancing digital disconnection research: Introduction to the special issue

2021 ◽  
pp. 135485652110575
Author(s):  
Stine Lomborg ◽  
Brita Ytre-Arne
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Methodological Development ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
The Past ◽  
Tourism Studies ◽  
The Face ◽  
Media And Communication

Over the past decade, scholarly interest in “digital disconnection” and related concepts has grown in media and communication studies, and in related disciplines. The idea of digital disconnection explicitly references digitalization as a key societal development, creating conditions of intensified and embedded media involvement across social life. The notion of digital disconnection thereby represents a critical response to mediated conditions that characterize our societies and permeate our everyday lives. In this special issue, we take stock of the contributions, challenges, and promises of digital disconnection research. We showcase how digital disconnection scholarship intersects with other developments in media and communication research, and is part of debates and empirical analysis in related disciplines from tourism studies to psychology. We argue that one of the key strengths of the emergent work is the variety of social domains and conceptual debates that are included and explored in digital disconnection research. On the other hand, we also point to the need for further methodological development, conceptual consolidation, and empirical diversity, particularly in the face of global inequalities and ongoing crises.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taina Bucher
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Past ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Media And Communication

Algorithms and software are starting to catch the interest of social scientists and humanities scholars, having become somewhat of a buzzword in media and communication studies during the past years. Yet we are only at the beginning of understanding how algorithms and computation more broadly are affecting social life and the production and dissemination of knowledge as we know it. The introductory chapter sketches the contours of an algorithmic media landscape as it is currently unfolding by focusing on the ways in which Facebook friendships are programmatically organized and shaped through algorithmic systems. The chapter introduces the concept of “programmed sociality” to draw attention to software and computational infrastructure as conditions of possibility for sociality in digital media.

A commentary on the special issue Performance and Citizenship: Challenging populist political performances through citizenship as performance?

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 706-715
Author(s):  
Jason Vincent A. Cabañes
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Transitional Democracies ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Media And Communication

This piece teases out the links between this special issue’s key themes regarding performance and citizenship and the distinct realities of transitional democracies. To contribute to generating insights into other countries currently in the grip of populist political regimes, it looks at the case of the Philippines. In this context, it matters to think about the diversity of productions that can enable performances of citizenship. This is because contemporary media and communication research in the country has understandably but narrowly prioritised the toxicity of online political discourse brought about by the rise of populist political performances and political trolling. It also matters in the Philippines to think about the role of those involved in productions about performances of citizenship. This is because of the problems posed by how ‘authenticity’ has been hijacked by populism and has been weaponised against those who seek to critique the current political dispensation.

Mediation Analysis and Warranted Inferences in Media and Communication Research: Examining Research Design in Communication Journals From 1996 to 2017

2020 ◽  
pp. 107769902096151
Author(s):  
Michael Chan ◽  
Panfeng Hu ◽  
Macau K. F. Mak
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Mediation Analysis ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Communication Research ◽  
Media And Communication

The number of studies employing mediation analysis has increased exponentially in the past two decades. Focusing on research design, this study examines 387 articles in the Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Communication Research, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and Media Psychology between 1996 and 2017. Findings show that while most studies report statistically significant indirect effects, they are inadequate to make causal inferences. Authors also often infer that they uncovered the “true” mediator(s) while alternative models and mediators are rarely acknowledged. Future studies should pay more attention to the role of research design and its implications for making causal inferences.

scholarly journals Professor Janet Wasko: An Interview with the President of the IAMCR and one of the Key Representatives of the Political Economy of Communication Approach

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Jernej Amon Prodnik ◽  
Janet Wasko
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
International Association ◽  
The Political ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Communication Approach ◽  
The University ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Political Economy Approach

This paper presents an interview with Janet Wasko. She is a Professor and Knight Chair in Communication Research at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication and widely considered as one of the key authors working in the tradition of the political economy of communication. Currently she is serving as the President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), one of the key international associations in the field of media and communication studies. She previously held several other positions in the IAMCR and served as the head of the Political Economy-section, which she also helped to establish. Professor Wasko published several influential books on the film industry, especially on Hollywood and the Disney Corporation. We talked especially about the influences on her approach, about her position in the IAMCR, her understanding of how the cultural and media industries work, the political economy approach in media and communication studies, and issues related to the film industry, which she mostly tackles in her own research.

scholarly journals Digital Smartness: Rethinking Communities and Citizenship in the Face of ‘Smart’ Technology

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 152-159
Author(s):  
Florian Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
The Face ◽  
Smart Community ◽  
Smart Communities

AbstractThis introduction to the Asiascape: Digital Asia special issue on ‘smart communities’ discusses how new technologies have created a paradigm of ‘smartness’ that informs how innovators, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and administrators imagine sociality in urban spaces. This is visible in plans for turning Singapore, Hong Kong, or Taipei into ‘smart cities’, and countries such as India, Japan, and South Korea are similarly rolling out initiatives that promise to revamp urban life across the region. Such ‘solutionist’ attempts to address the complexities of contemporary social life through technology cleverly fuse surveillance techniques, capitalist structures, free labour practices, and neoliberal governance to create urban utopias of safety, convenience, and community. We have asked the contributors to this special issue to explore what people do, through and with digital technologies, as they establish, claim, contest, and alter various social relations in the name of ‘smart community’, and this article introduces and discusses their results.

scholarly journals Protest communication ecologies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Mercea
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Information Communication ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
Growth Area ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Communication Practices ◽  
Media And Communication

The flurry of protests since the turn of the decade has sustained a growth area in the social sciences. The diversity of approaches to the various facets and concerns raised by the collective action of aggrieved groups the world over impresses through multidisciplinarity and the wealth of insights it has generated. This introduction to a special issue of the international journal Information, Communication and Society is an invitation to recover conceptual instruments—such as the ecological trope—that have fallen out of fashion in media and communication studies. We account for their fall from grace and explicate the rationale for seeking to reinsert them into the empirical terrain of interlocking media, communication practices and protest which we aim to both capture with theory and adopt as a starting point for further analytical innovation.

scholarly journals Media and communication studies in Sweden

Publizistik ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Springer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Information Centre ◽  
The North ◽  
Sister Organization ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Media And Communication

AbstractMedia and communication studies is a comparatively young academic discipline in Sweden. The subject’s establishment began with the 1960s—a time when the expansion of mass media led to a bigger demand for analysis, education and critical reflection. Along with that, political and commercial interests in more knowledge led to commissioned research, another considerable factor in the subject’s development and institutionalization. The field was brought forth by humanistic and social-scientific strands, and some actors conveniently travel between these two since the demarcation lines are less pronounced in the North. Currently, roughly around 250 scholars are active in the field, with about 200 of them organized in DGPuK’s Nordic sister organization FSMK. Media and communication research in Sweden is also greatly oriented towards the broader Nordic context, institutionalized for instance through the Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research (Nordicom). For scholars, the labour market is comparatively open, not only for other Nordic academics but also for entries from countries outside Scandinavia. For students, the field provides a rich smorgasbord of general and highly specialized programmes or stand-alone courses of variable length offered in both Swedish and English. This article aims to inform about the history and the contemporary conditions of Swedish media and communication studies, with a personal note based on own experiences.

scholarly journals A View from the Inside: The Dawning Of De-Westernization of CEE Media and Communication Research?

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Epp Lauk
Keyword(s):  
Critical Mass ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Media ◽  
Collapse Of Communism ◽  
East And West ◽  
Media And Communication

The Editorial outlines some characteristics of the development of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) media and communication scholarship during the past 25 years. In the majority of CEE countries, the media and communication research was re-established after the collapse of communism. Since then, a critical mass of active scholars has appeared who form an integral part of the larger European academia. A gradual integration of East and West perspectives in media and communication research is taking place along with moving away from the barely West-centred approach, and utilizing the research done by CEE scholars. Certain ‘de-westernization’ and internationalization of the research in terms of theoretical and methodological frameworks is depicted.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document