[ecrea] out now: Special Issue of Javnost - Anchoring the Critical in Media Research

[Apologies for cross-posting]

Anchoring the Critical in Media Research
Special Issue of Javnost - The Public. Journal of the European Institute 
for Communication and Culture
Guest Edited by Ilija Tomanic Trivundža and Nico Carpentier
Volume 23, Issue 1, 2016
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjav20/23/1

We're happy to announce the publication of the special issue of Javnost 
- The Public, entitled "Anchoring the Critical in Media Research".

Below you will find the Table of Contents (including the link to one 
article that is offered as open access) and all abstracts.

Nico & Ilija

++++++++++++++++

Grounding Communication Studies in Enlightenment Criticality: Scaling Up 
Theoretical and Dialectical Ambition
Ed McLuskie

The New Spirit of Capitalism, Innovation Fetishism and New Information 
and Communication Technologies
Marko Ampuja

Inequality and Liberal Democracy: A Critical Take on Economic and 
Political Power Aspects
Paschal Preston

A Radical Democratic Reform of Media Regulation in Response to Three 
Levels of Crisis
Hannu Nieminen

Beyond the Ladder of Participation: An Analytical Toolkit for the 
Critical Analysis of Participatory Media Processes
Nico Carpentier
Open access > 
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13183222.2016.1149760

Being (Truly) Critical in Media and Communication Studies: Reflections 
of a Media Scholar Between Science and Politics
Kaarle Nordenstreng


++++++++++++++++


Abstracts

Grounding Communication Studies in Enlightenment Criticality: Scaling Up 
Theoretical and Dialectical Ambition
Ed McLuskie
The Enlightenment produced theories of great ambition that aimed to 
break from dogma, to put reason in the hands of humanity and to imagine 
possible futures and then pursue them. The Enlightenment also brought 
devastation to humanity in connection with research practices that grew 
both abstract and narrow. Communication and media studies developed 
largely outside theoretical debates surrounding restricted ambitions for 
the scale of conceptual work, settling research into enclaved practices. 
This article argues for a critical return to Enlightenment criticality 
where an evolutionary perspective meets other ambitious attempts to 
reach the scale of a philosophical anthropology in which “theory” aims 
beyond the particular and the present. Three exemplars that lead to a 
convergence of that aim are discussed, by characterising the work of 
Jürgen Habermas, Harold Adams Innis and Thomas Piketty.

The New Spirit of Capitalism, Innovation Fetishism and New Information 
and Communication Technologies
Marko Ampuja
The neoliberal developments over the past 30 years have received much 
support from a set of ideas that can be defined as “the new spirit of 
capitalism”. These ideas have offered powerful legitimisations of 
neoliberalism, conceived as a progressive force that has replaced the 
supposedly bureaucratic structures of earlier Keynesian welfare states 
with market-driven network structures that allow innovations, creativity 
and entrepreneurship to flourish. In this article, I will critically 
examine the constituents of the new spirit of capitalism, in particular 
its intimate association with liberal discourses of innovation. I will 
then focus on how such ideas have come forward in recent information 
society thinking via a discussion of Manuel Castells's influential 
network society theory. This is followed by a critique of mainstream 
understandings of innovation from a neo-Marxist perspective, with an eye 
towards new information and communication technology and critical media 
research in times of a growing contestation of neoliberal hegemony.

Inequality and Liberal Democracy: A Critical Take on Economic and 
Political Power Aspects
Paschal Preston
After decades of benign neglect, the issues of economic and social 
inequalities have re-entered the stage of mainstream political attention 
and debate in the western heartlands of the capitalist system over the 
past couple of years. On the face of it, this is no accident or 
surprise. The renewed attention on economic and social inequality 
unfolds against a background of very slow, partial and highly uneven 
“recovery” from a major financial crash which emerged in the 
north-Atlantic core in 2007–2008. In this setting we observe that the 
growing attention to issues of inequality in recent times is not 
unrelated to the manifest amplification of the longer-term trend towards 
increased economic inequalities that has become more evident in the 
period since 2008. This article will draw on (engage with) recent work 
and debates in neighbouring academic fields (political economy, economic 
sociology, political studies) concerning the sources, meaning and 
implications of growing economic inequalities. It pays particular 
attention to the high-profile work of Thomas Piketty on inequality 
trends. The article will consider the implications of such research and 
inequality trends for what now passes as liberal economic and political 
theory and also for the study, forms, conceptualisations and practice of 
political communication.

A Radical Democratic Reform of Media Regulation in Response to Three 
Levels of Crisis
Hannu Nieminen
In the development of modern states, the media’s role has been 
fundamental, as the organisation of national interests was their central 
function. From this viewpoint, the media and its pivotal role in the 
construction of “imagined communities” can be compared with other major 
nation-building institutions, such as the education system, churches, 
national army and civil service. These can be characterised as epistemic 
institutions, creating and reproducing a form of knowledge that is 
centrally constructed around national concepts and symbols. When 
thinking how to revitalise democracy and create conditions for a new, 
transnational political agency, we have to address the ways and means by 
which the media are regulated today. If we accept the idea that informed 
and active citizenship is at the core of functioning democracy, we need 
to ask the role of the media in its production. The problem is that all 
criteria promoting and providing democratic citizenship are already 
stipulated in a number of international agreements and conventions as 
well as in national constitutions; what is missing is a binding global 
regulatory framework that would guarantee that they are not only 
formally adapted to national and international laws, but also enforced 
in practice.

Beyond the Ladder of Participation: An Analytical Toolkit for the 
Critical Analysis of Participatory Media Processes
Nico Carpentier
Open access > 
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13183222.2016.1149760
Participatory research is facing three challenges—how to deal with the 
theoretisation and conceptualisation of participation; how to support 
the research with analytical models; and how the evaluate the research 
outcomes. This article aims to address these three problems by 
distinguishing two main approaches (a sociological and a political) in 
participatory theory and developing a four-level and 12-step analytical 
model that functions within the political approach. In this analytical 
model, a series of key concepts are used: process, field, actor, 
decision-making moment and power. The normative-evaluative problem is 
addressed by reverting to the critical perspective to evaluate the 
societal desirability of particular participatory intensities. This 
critical perspective—potentially—adds a 13th and final normative layer 
to the analytical model.

Being (Truly) Critical in Media and Communication Studies: Reflections 
of a Media Scholar Between Science and Politics
Kaarle Nordenstreng
This article is based on the author's contribution to the 2014 EURICOM 
Colloquium with its call for “reflections about critique and its 
conditions of possibility in the academic field of media and 
communication studies”. The article intends to review the context and 
nature of critical media and communication studies, seen through the 
author's personal experience in national as well as international 
spheres. While the testimony is autobiographical, an attempt is made to 
contemplate career development from the outside unlike in conventional 
memoires. This article is a prelude to a reflective review of the 
author's professional and political life story, forthcoming as a book in 
Finnish. The introduction gives examples of the use of the term 
“critical” in the field of media and communication studies, followed by 
a review of different ways in which the critical concept is used in the 
literature of the field, leading to a reflection on the precarious 
relationship between the intellectual and the political. A personal 
testimony by the author then provides a case illustrating how a scholar 
becomes critical under the influence of philosophical, political and 
international factors. The discussion at the end offers some concluding 
reflections.





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Nico Carpentier
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Uppsala University
Department of Informatics and Media
Kyrkogårdsgatan 10
753 13 Uppsala
Sweden
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) - Free University of Brussels
&
Charles University in Prague
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New article (open access):
Beyond the Ladder of Participation.
An Analytical Toolkit for the Critical Analysis of Participatory Media 
Processes
Javnost - the Public, Vol 23, Iss 2 (2016)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13183222.2016.1149760
----------------------------
New article (open access):
Différencier accès, interaction et participation
in Pierre Morelli, Nathalie Pignard-Cheynel and Didier Baltazart (eds.)
Publics et TIC: Confrontations conceptuelles et recherches empiriques (2016)
http://nicocarpentier.net/2016_DifferencierAccesInteractionParticipation_Carpentier.pdf
++
English version:
Differentiating between access, interaction and participation
Conjunctions, Vol 2, No 2 (2015)
http://www.conjunctions-tjcp.com/article/view/22915
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Centre for the study of Democracy, Signification and Resistance
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European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School
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E-mail (UUppsala): (nico.carpentier /at/ im.uu.se)
E-mail (VUBrussels): (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
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