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Thursday, November 10
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PHC02
NewConcepts, NewPerspectives
PP 102
New Materialism: Non-Normative and Non-Representational Theories in Communication Studies
I. Salovaara
1
1
University of Southern Denmark, Department for the Study of Culture, Odense, Denmark
Normative theories of communication and media have struggled with the topic of materiality. For example, the historical narrative of the ‘public sphere’
situated the phenomenon in specific spaces, where practices (public deliberation) and language (discourse) constructed political agencies, and further
publics. From the 1990s onwards convergence brought concepts of network and complexity into the theoretical discourse. This relational turn changed
the social ontology of the public sphere into a dynamic and complex system, erasing the division between the fields of reality (the world), representation
(discourse), and subjectivity (agency). This changed the public sphere into an assemblage consisting of both human and non-human actors interacting
in a highly dynamic, networked environment. This paper proposes a framework for considering this new materiality in the field of the normative theories
of communication: the assemblage theory and, non-representational and complexity theories. Drawing from Deleuze & Guattari (1987), Bennett (2010),
Thrift (1996) and Latour (2004) in order to imagine post-human assemblages of public sphere, this paper argues for a relational ontology that emphasizes
the complex interactions of political assemblage. Empirically, it draws from the author’s studies on recent participatory political movements.
PP 103
Grounded Philosophy: A Methodology for Today’s (Dis)Connected Philosophy, Research and Practice
M. Zezulkova
1,2
1
Charles University, Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Prague, Czech Republic
2
Bournemouth University, Centre for Excellence in Media Practice, Poole, United Kingdom
An increasingly (dis)connected theory and practice, research and innovation, academic disciplines, and cross-national subcultures require approach to
media and communication research that is ‘against the kind of methodolatry where the tail of methodology wags the dog of inquiry’ (Lather 2006, p.
47). As Lather suggests, ‘the task [in this historical time, between no longer and the not yet,] is to produce different knowledge and produce knowledge
differently (…) (to) move away from a narrow scientism and toward an expanded notion of scientificity more capable of sustaining the social sciences’
(ibid., p. 52). Equally, Bacon (1620 [1901], p.12) poignantly wrote much earlier that ‘it would be madness and inconsistency to suppose that things which
have never yet been performed can be performed without employing some hitherto untried means’. Inspired by this and similar social research criticism,
and by the experience of conducting an intercultural and interdisciplinary research exploring the child’media experience and learning that treated practice
and philosophy as ‘interdependent parts of one ordered totality’(Carr 2004, p.69), ‘grounded philosophy’has been developed as a philosophy-led, flexible
and responsive research methodology on which this paper focuses. Grounded theory shall serve to any intercultural inductive social research that, although
being grounded in participants’ individual and collective sociocultural-historical context, is capable of arriving to transferrable and holistic conceptual
understanding – or ‘a grounded philosophy’ that asks ‘what is’ as well as ‘what could be’. The core quintet, which theoretically underpinned the research
philosophy and justified the development of this methodology, was formed of Edith Stein’s phenomenology of fusion, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics,
Martin Buber’s I and Thou, Lev Vygotsky’s cultural-historical approach, and Carl Jung’s archetypes and collective unconscious. The paper will put emphasis
on the significantly less known and used Stein’s (1916 [1989]) philosophy of empathy in media and communication research and highlight how this and
the remaining four theoretical perspectives complement each other within the introduced grounded philosophy, its theory and practice. A table sum‑
marising grounded methodology’s ontology, epistemology, researcher’s and participants‘ roles, and more, will be handed out together with other visual
interpretations of the methodology and its approach to data collection and analysis. As a way of further interpretation, a very brief case study of its appli‑
cation in practice will penetrate the talk, as the methodology was developed for a doctoral project (with field research conducted in the USA and the Czech
Republic} that was successfully defended at Bournemouth University (UK) and well received by its examiners – Dr. John Potter (IOE) and Professeor Jackie
Marsh (University of Sheffield) – in November 2015. REFERENCES Bacon, F., 1620[1901]. Novum Organum. New York: Collier and Son (Classic reprint series
by Forgotten Books). Carr, W., 2004. Philosophy and Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 38(1), 55–73. Lather, P., 2006. Paradigm Proliferation
as a Good Thing to Think With: Teaching Qualitative Research as a Wild Profusion. Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(1), 35–57. Stein, E. 1916[1989]. On
the Problem of Empathy. Washington DC: ICS Publications.
PP 104
The Emperor’s New Clothes? "Mediatization" as a Hotly Contested Concept
M. Bergman
1
1
University of Helsinki, Department of Social Research, Helsinki, Belgium
Rightly or wrongly, the concept of 'mediatization” has become one of the buzzwords of contemporary media and communication studies. For its most
enthusiastic proponents, the term heralds a genuinely new perspective in the field; even the possibility of a 'paradigm shift”has been evoked. At the other
end of the scale, the mediatization movement has been summarily dismissed as a hollow and passing fad. However, as the coinage continues to attract new
supporters, somewhat more nuanced appraisals have also begun to emerge. In their critical evaluation, David Deacon and James Stanyer (2014) not only at‑
tempt to burst the alleged bubble; they also draw our attention to broader questions concerning the formation and use of a concept such as 'mediatization”
in media and communication research. This harks back to some longstanding issues in the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences, topics which
are rarely broached in the communication disciplines these days – namely the relationship between empirical and theoretical concepts and the functions
of conceptual explication, elucidation, and critique. In this paper, I will take a closer look at the import of the conceptual part of the mediatization debate.
Accordingly, I will not address the empirical question of the possible existence of a social process or 'metaprocess” that would justify the introduction
of the neologism. Rather, my primary concern here is with the character of the concept under consideration, the ways in which it may be disambiguated or