Digital Media Technologies Revisited:
Theorising social relations, interactions and communication
A two-day conference co-organised by the
ECREA Digital Culture & Communication (DCC) section,
the DGPuK Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) section and
the DGPuK Media Sociology (MS) section
with support from the Centre for Material
Digital Culture (DMDC), University of Sussex, UK
and the COST 298: Participation in the Broadband Society network
Place: University of the Arts, Berlin, Germany
Dates: Nov. 20-21, 2009
Topic:
This two-day conference on ?Digital
Technologies Revisited? aims to understand
contemporary developments in digital media and
digital media theory by looking backwards as
well as forwards. We set out to explore an
in-between time: a time, when much of the hype
concerning digital media has died down, much
research material has been gathered and
analyzed and quite a bit about the
possibilities and limitations of digital media
(especially in comparison to older media forms) has been understood.
Far from a communication revolution, the media
landscape has nonetheless changed substantially
in recent years. In fact, we have undergone a
process of diffusion and appropriation: digital
media have become an important and
ever-increasing part of our everyday lives.
They suffuse our communication, information and
entertainment spheres. Not surprisingly, the
perceived connection between the internet and
many areas of social life, from work to play,
has steadily increased in recent years.
However, even as digital media become
pervasive, ubiquitous, common and mundane,
innovation continues to become an integral
characteristic of digital media forms, the
proliferation of which is challenging to map.
We would therefore like to return to earlier
models and theories that attempted to explain
new (digital) media in its ?first wave? forms.
Additionally, we would like to address the
question of what kind of alterations and
additions can be used to adapt existing models
and theories for current purposes (e.g.
mediated person-to-person communication;
para-social interactions with virtual agents;
pseudo-social interactions with intelligent machines, etc.).
The range of models and theories that can be
used, re-visited, or adapted is wide (i.e.
traditional communication studies models,
cultural studies theories, sociology and
others). We want to encourage papers that
explore tensions between older and new
approaches and older and newer ?new media?
formations. Where has there been movement,
where not, and are there in fact new theories emerging?
The social world sits at the heart of these
diverse concerns. Social relations,
interactions and communication are at the heart
of our questions. Within this focus, the
possible range of theories and methods used, is
wide. The following provides the range of angles that we propose:
- HCI revisited:
Human-computer-interaction was an early
forerunner concerning questions of the relation
between humans and computers (as well as,
eventually, humans via computers). What do we
know of these relationships by now? How do they
differ from other human-object relationships?
And how do developments in these fields
continue to inform, intersect and diverge from
the social life of digital media forms?
- Virtual reality and AI re-thought:
Virtual reality and AI frameworks are another
reference point that dominated earlier
cybercultural theory, and design. What was
specific about these moments and intersections?
Why have these frameworks become less used by
technocultural theory (at least for more
popular theorizations)? What has survived in
terms of virtual reality and AI concepts in
contemporary formations such as Web 2.0, Facebook and Second Life?
- Disappearance of the machine ? ubiquity, ambience and similar approaches
A more recent development has been around the
merging of machines, and computational
architecture with our environments. Thinking
about pervasive computing, sense perception and
intimate technologies are increasingly being
used as frameworks for analysis. Where are they
at in terms of the current state of
development? And what consequences would these
have for existing theoretical approaches (e.g.
of appropriation of media technologies) and
questions of power? What happens to ethical and
political issues, such as privacy, monitoring,
etc.? What does pervasive computing mean for our relationships with machines?
- Identities 4.0?
Identity was a much discussed topic in early
web discourses. It is one that keeps returning
in new disguises. Identity, it seems, has
survived the ?post? in identity politics.
However, the valences of identity are now much
more negative than the more utopic versions
that proliferated in early digital media
cultures. Identity categories have
proliferated, and the intersections of race,
nation, class, gender, sexuality and belief
play a part in generating insecurity and a lack
of trust between citizens, denizens and
racialized others, the adult world and ?youth?,
or children and potential ?paedophiles?. Can
early theorizations of identity and digital
media be brought to bear on contemporary
experiences and what would these look like?
- Bodies
Community, identity and the body were the
tripartite features of digital media theory in
the 1990s. Whist community has been
reformulated as SL and social networking, and
identity continues to return, the body has also
become an increasingly urgent site of enquiry
as convergences of informational and
biotechnological practices of body knowledge
become materialized through digital media
practices. These intersections offer up
questions about the precise contours of current
biodigital identity in the form of intersecting
DNA databases, personal genomes, and
biometrics. What approaches and questions can
address these informatic corporealisations and
their intersection with everyday life worlds?
- Mass media, journalism and public communication
Since the mid-1990s, a broad corpus of theories
on the production, dissemination, reception,
and the public and/or personal impact of online
mass media has evolved in the social sciences.
How do journalists? routines change in online
media? Does the public relevance of
journalistic mass media decrease or increase in
present and future times? How can the
(societal) diffusion or (individual)
appropriation of new media developments
described or analyzed? What do mass media mean
to the audience, and what are the present and
future economic perspectives of online mass media?
- COST 298
Additionally, COST 298 members are invited to
send separate abstracts for a COST panel. COST
298 is an Action within the intergovernmental
framework for European Co-operation in the
field of Scientific and Technical Research. In
COST 298 European scientists from
telecommunication research departments,
universities and operators together with
independent consultants collaborate in
cross-disciplinary groups to analyze the social
dimensions of people?s relationships to
information and communication technologies. In
the COST 298 panel, the same questions of older
models and newer developments that guide the
overall conference are asked more specifically
concerning the broadband society. What have we
learned in the last four years of the COST 298
network? Only COST 298 members will be eligible to apply for this panel.
Please submit an extended abstract (700 words
max.) by the 31st of May 2009 (and clearly
stating which topic section you would like to submit this to) to:
Prof. Dr. Maren Hartmann - University of the
Arts (UdK) ? GWK - Mierendorffstraße 30 - 10589
Berlin - Germany - Phone: +49 30 3185 2943
Email: <mailto:(hartmann /at/ udk-berlin.de)>(hartmann /at/ udk-berlin.de)
__________
Prof. Dr. Maren Hartmann
Juniorprofessur Kommunikationssoziologie/
Assistant Professor Sociology of Communication
Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftskommunikation/
Communication for Business and Society
Universität der Künste/ University of the Arts
Mierendorffstraße 30
D-10589 Berlin
Tel./Phone: +49 30 3185 2943
Email: <mailto:(hartmann /at/ udk-berlin.de)>(hartmann /at/ udk-berlin.de)
