scholarly journals Media Infrastructures and the Politics of Digital Time

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Time Management ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Time Critical ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Digital Time

In a crucial sense, all machines are time machines. The essays in Media Infrastructures and the Politics of Digital Time develop the central concept of hardwired temporalities to consider how technical networks hardwire and rewire patterns of time. Digital media introduce new temporal patterns in their features of instant communication, synchronous collaboration, intricate time management, and continually improved speed. They construct temporal infrastructures that affect the rhythms of lived experience and shape social relations and practices of cooperation. Interdisciplinary in method and international in scope, the volume draws together insights from media and communication studies, cultural studies, and science and technology studies while staging an important encounter between two distinct approaches to the temporal patterning of media infrastructures, a North American strain emphasizing the social and cultural experiences of lived time and a European tradition, prominent especially in Germany, focusing on technological time and time-critical processes.

The Perfect Storm: A Subcultural Analysis of the QAnon Movement

2021 ◽  
pp. 089692052110558
Author(s):  
Christopher T. Conner ◽  
Nicholas MacMurray
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
The Social ◽  
Perfect Storm

In this study, we examine the social phenomenon known as ‘QAnon’. While QAnon is typically thought of as an exclusively online cultural phenomenon, and thus easily dismissed, it has played a significant role in promoting physical acts of violence—including multiple murders and the attack on the United States Capital on 6 January 2021. Utilizing a qualitative analysis of 300 hours of QAnon-related content, we argue that the widespread beliefs held by QAnon supporters were only possible due to the confluence of feelings of distrust in government and other public officials, purveyors of QAnon that profited in the movement’s success, and a populist digital media environment in which extremist ideas are housed and promoted. We conclude by asking if this is a phenomenon created by greater connectivity, or if this is a byproduct of late-stage capitalism in which social relations continue to be atomized.

Situating Technology: Confrontations over the Use of Sonar among Turkish Fishermen and Marine Scientists

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ståle Knudsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Controversial Issue ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Fishing Practices

AbstractSince its introduction in the Turkish fisheries in 1980, use of the fish finder device sonar has been a controversial issue among fishermen and between fishermen and scientists. Most fishermen claim that sonars scare away or kill fish while local marine scientists contend that sonars have no such effect. What can study of this conflict tell us about the use of advanced technology in regions of the world far away from the metropolitan production of such technologies? In this ethnographic approach to a study in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) the fishermen's use of and the scientists' research on the sonar are surveyed. The article discusses the degree to which the adoption of sonar in the Turkish fisheries has resulted in a standardization of fishing practices—not only technologically, but possibly also in the way the fishermen perceive the hunt. Some theoretical arguments on how people relate to technology are reviewed and a phenomenologically inspired perspective advanced. It is argued that too much attention on finding the "Truth"—in this case whether the sonar is harmful to fish or not—diverts attention from more fundamental issues, such as what kinds of change sonar has brought to the social relations of production.

scholarly journals Идентичность «защитник» в социальной и профессиональной практике Фриды Вигдоровой

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-83
Author(s):  
Elena G. Serebryakova
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Behavioral Model ◽  
Public Intervention ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Behavior ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Model Formation ◽  
The 19Th Century

The object of the research is the social and professional position of the writer and journalist Frida Vigdorova, which was estimated by the Soviet li­beral intelligentsia of the 1960s—1970s as extremely valuable. Her record of the trial of I. Brodsky served as a model for the drafters of reports on the trials of dissidents — A. Ginzburg, P. Litvinov, N. Gorbanevskaya, and others. Nonconformists shared the worldview principles of Vigdorova, replicated her behavioral model in the process of protecting dissidents from persecution of the authorities, and made the “advocate” model the standard of public behavior. The article aims to identify the origins of the “advocate” behavioral model formation and to characterize the journalist’s axiology. Frida Vigdorova’s journalism and memoirs of her contemporaries served as the study material.The author asserts that Vigdorova modeled her social and professional behavior on the samples crea­ted by the Russian and European tradition. V. Korolenko’s public activities was the closest reference point. To prove this thesis, the author compares Vigdorova’s behavioral tactics in the “case of Brodsky” and Korolenko’s in the “case of Beilis”. Comments of Vigdorova’s contemporaries confirm her conscious orientation to the “advocate” behavioral model, implemented not only in the “case of Brodsky”, but also in her social practice and journalism. Vigdorova’s axiology, according to her contemporaries, included active help to people, humanism and a desire for justice.Vigdorova’s journalism is devoted to the ethics of social relations. The plot of her essays is usually based on dramatic events requiring immediate public intervention. She orients the reader to empathy and active social behavior in response. Thus, the task of forming the active participation of citizens in the fate of each other is solved; the value of compassion and mercy is established.The article concludes that the axiology and beha­vioral practices of Vigdorova included the universal values for the Russian and European tradition of the 19th century — anthropocentrism and humanism.

The Lives of Objects

2018 ◽  
pp. 30-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessie Hohmann
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Museum Studies ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Thing Theory ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ontological Categories

This chapter brings into dialogue a number of materially astute theories and methodologies in the humanities and social sciences to consider how we might conceive of the lives of objects in international law. It begins with everyday lives—the way law and objects are woven into daily existences, drawing on ethnographies of the lived experience of law. Second, it considers the social lives of objects and biographical approaches to the lives of things, making reference to anthropological ideas, museum studies, and history, as well as ‘life writing’ and biography. Third, it considers objects as vibrant, agentive actants, drawing on ideas from Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) and science and technology studies (STS), thing theory, and also recognizing the long legal history of objects as agents. The chapter deliberately seeks to unsettle the legal and ontological categories of subject and object, to provoke reflection on how they are constructed and contested in international law.

scholarly journals Digital media infrastructures: pipes, platforms, and politics

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Christophe Plantin ◽  
Aswin Punathambekar
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Communication Networks ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Political Economy Of Media ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Infrastructure Studies

Over the past decade, a growing body of scholarship in media studies and other cognate disciplines has focused our attention on the social, material, cultural, and political dimensions of the infrastructures that undergird and sustain media and communication networks and cultures across the world. This infrastructural turn assumes greater significance in relation to digital media and in particular, the influence that digital platforms have come to wield. Having ‘disrupted’ many sectors of social, political, and economic life, many of the most widely used digital platforms now seem to operate as infrastructures themselves. This special issue explores how an infrastructural perspective reframes the study of digital platforms and allows us to pose questions of scale, labor, industry logics, policy and regulation, state power, cultural practices, and citizenship in relation to the routine, everyday uses of digital platforms. In this opening article, we offer a critical overview of media infrastructure studies and situate the study of digital infrastructures and platforms within broader scholarly and public debates on the history and political economy of media infrastructures. We also draw on the study of media industries and production cultures to make the case for an inter-medial and inter-sectoral approach to understanding the entanglements of digital platforms and infrastructures.

Music Thinking Process: Unfolding the creation of the piece Résonances manifestes

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-291
Author(s):  
Hubert Gendron-Blais
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Field Recordings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Musical Event ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
Music Piece

Beyond the social and even the human, sound opens onto the intertwining of movements animating the lived experience. A sonic epistemology considers not only that the acoustic ecologies are enunciative of social relations and power dynamics, but also that they tell about the way reality is lived, experienced, organised: they are expressive, in themselves. This means, for an epistemology of phonosophy, that every perception of a sound implies a conceptual movement, which carries a mental dimension that could become the material for another thinking practice, for a sophia. This article approaches music as thinking in itself: a thought of the sonic. This affirmation will be expanded through the contribution of process philosophy (Whitehead, Deleuze and Guattari, Manning, etc.), which allows a musical event to be considered as an ecology, produced by the encounter of a multiplicity of bodies (human, sonic, technological, etc.). The processes of capture of forces involved and the different techniques required to increase the expressive potentialities of the musical assemblage will be unfolded through the case of Résonances manifestes, a comprovised music piece based on a sound score composed of field recordings from autonomous demonstrations.

scholarly journals GEOPOLITICS IN THE INFRASTRUCTURAL IDEOLOGIES OF 5G

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter 'Maxigas' Dunajcsik ◽  
Niels Ten Oever
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
World Systems Theory ◽  
Development Organizations ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Historical Agency

This paper explores how infrastructural ideologies function as tools in geopolitical struggles for dependence and independence of world powers. Meese Frith and Wilken (2020) suggest that controversies around 5G stem from infrastructural anxieties best examined in the framework of geopolitics. We build on this work by analyzing the emerging infrastructural imaginary of 5G in light of the changing global division of labor. Sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim 2015) refer to the vision of technologies themselves, while ideologies refer to the totality of social relations, translating the objective reality of material conditions to subjective lived experience (Bory 2020). The Western imaginaries around 5G infrastructures reflect, deflect, translate and sublimate the infrastructural anxieties tied to the development and deployment of new network paradigms. Their controversial nature, contradictory content, and fragmented presentation is a necessary part of living through the trauma of lost historical agency on the part of Western superpowers. We engaged in code ethnography (Rosa 2019) of GSM, internet, and 5G technologies, as well as participant observation in the main standard-development organizations of the internet and 5G, and semi-structured interviews with equipment vendors and network operators. Our methodological assumption, taken from World Systems Theory (Wallerstein and Wallerstein 2004), is that the character and content of imaginaries and their underpinning ideologies creatively reflect the position of actors in the global division of labor. This paper contributes to the understanding of the role of infrastructures in geopolitical power tussles and straddles the fields of science and technology studies and international relations.

Antisocial Media

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Sharing Economy ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Free Time ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Social

This book addresses popular and academic concerns that the institution of work is being irreparably damaged by digital/media technologies. The book considers three specific concerns (each in a separate chapter): 1) that all jobs may soon be automated out of existence, 2) that the sharing economy will degrade the few jobs that remain, and 3) that services like Facebook and Instagram are turning leisure into work, exploiting users in their so-called free time. Through an in-depth examination of these concerns, the book proposes that what really concerns these writers is not that work is being degraded or may soon disappear altogether, but rather that society itself is under attack, and more specifically the bonds of responsibility on which social relations depend. Drawing from recent work on affect/emotion and from the controversial antisocial thesis in queer theory, the book argues that the anxiety surrounding these transformations aims primarily not to slow or reverse these changes, but rather to solicit readers to identify with the social: to stop being irresponsible, unaccountable, lazy, self-serving, and hedonistic, and to once again engage in the hard work of being a productive member of society.

Material Culture

Sociology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence E. McDonnell ◽  
Kelcie Vercel
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Institutional Characteristics ◽  
Sociology Of Culture ◽  
The Social

Beginning with many of its earliest writings, sociology has a long tradition of theorizing the role of objects and material culture in social life. In the middle of the 20th century, these themes were taken up again by major sociological and anthropological thinkers who inspired a resurgence of interest in the study of objects. The sociology of culture and art began to address the production and reception of objects, while scholars from anthropology, cultural studies, and media studies began to develop a robust body of work around material culture. These two fields have somewhat different takes on the study of objects. Sociological accounts tend to be people focused, examining how institutional characteristics of art worlds shape the objects produced, and focusing explanations of meaning-making on the social position of the audience more so than the symbolic qualities of the object. Alternatively, material culture approaches tend to be object focused, engaging objects as symbols that help explain how people organize subcultures, create solidarity through exchange, or express social status. A turn toward materiality, originating from anthropology but taken up more recently in sociology, privileges the material qualities of objects and how they shape the use and symbolic meaning of objects. This work on objects raises the question of how sociologists should incorporate objects into accounts of action. This question has sparked an ongoing cross-disciplinary debate about whether objects have agency. Research in science and technology studies, alongside studies of craft and sport, have brought attention to how objects act back, shaping how knowledge is produced. Objects have also been understood as mechanisms of power, by shaping categories and morality, ritualizing icons, stabilizing social relations as instruments of the states and institutions, and structuring action through the built environment. These robust and vibrant areas of research make a strong case for the incorporation of objects into theories of power and knowledge.

scholarly journals The Social Ordering of an Everyday Practice: The Case of Laundry

Sociology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 1134-1151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josephine Mylan ◽  
Dale Southerton
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Object Use ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Coordination Activity

Sociological contributions to debates surrounding sustainable consumption have presented strong critiques of methodological individualism and technological determinism. Drawing from a range of sociological insights from the fields of consumption, everyday life and science and technology studies, these critiques emphasize the recursivity between (a) everyday performances and object use, and (b) how those performances are socially ordered. Empirical studies have, however, been criticized as being descriptive of micro-level phenomena to the exclusion of explanations of processes of reproduction or change. Developing a methodological approach that examines sequences of activities this article explores different forms of coordination (activity, inter-personal and material) that condition the temporal and material flows of laundry practices. Doing so produces an analysis that de-centres technologies and individual performances, allowing for the identification of mechanisms that order the practice of laundry at the personal, household and societal levels. These are: social relations; cultural conventions; domestic materiality; and institutionalized temporal rhythms. In conclusion, we suggest that addressing such mechanisms offers fruitful avenues for fostering more sustainable consumption, compared to dominant approaches that are founded within ‘deficit models’ of action.

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