MEDIA: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry explores evolving definitions of media and interrogates how media technologies are transforming media theory and practice. The collection addresses the emerging roles of media across a wide range of disciplines, featuring contributions from an array of internationally known scholars and practitioners.
The definition of media itself is in a constant state of flux, expanding to include an ever-widening range of concepts, products, services, and institutions. Here, the authors reconceptualize media, drawing not only on media and communication studies, but also philosophy, sociology, political science, biology, art, computer science, and information studies, among other disciplines. The collection challenges traditional notions of media, explores emerging media, and reexamines concepts including technology, environment, and ecology; multimedia, mediation, and labor; and participation, repair, and curation. These timely and original discussions by established scholars in the field provide a valuable contribution to the fusion of media across disciplines.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Genealogy
1. ‘When Multimedia Meant Democracy’, Fred Turner, Stanford University (USA)
2. ‘Four Reporting Cultures: Designing Humans In and Out of the Future of Journalism’, John Markoff, Stanford University (USA)
3. ‘Dark Materials: Media, Machines, Markets’, Graham Murdock, Loughborough University (UK)
Meanings of Media
4. ‘A Community of Media: There Is a There There’, Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths, University of London (UK)
5. ‘Media as Cultural Techniques: From Inscribed Surfaces to Digitalized Interfaces’, Sybille Kramer, Freie Universität Berlin (Germany)
6. ‘Understanding “Medium” in the Context of the Media Ecology Tradition’, Lance Strate, Fordham University (USA)
Organs and Organization
7. ‘Between Media Studies and Organizational Communication: Organizing as the Creation of Organs’, François Cooren and Frédérik Matte, Université de Montréal (Canada)
8. ‘Paradigms for Creative Industry Research’, Angela McRobbie, Goldsmiths, University of London (UK)
9. ‘The Politics of Mediation: Colonization to Co-Generative Democracy’, Stanley Deetz, University of Colorado Boulder (USA)
Engagement and Extensions
10. ‘Phantasmal Selves: Computational Approaches to Understanding Virtual Identities’, D. Fox Harrell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)
11. ‘Calm Technology/Media and the Limit of Attention’, Amber Case, Lewis & Clark College (USA)
12. ‘The Next Internet’, Vincent Mosco, Queen’s University (Canada)
Biomediations
13. ‘Biological Dimensions of Media Ecology and Its Relationship to Biosemiotics’, Robert K. Logan, University of Toronto (Canada)
14. ‘Biomediations: From “Life in Media” to “Living Media”’, Joanna Zylinska, Goldsmiths, University of London (UK)
15. ‘Lynn Hershman Leeson: The Infinity Engine’, Ingeborg Reichle, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien (Austria)
Repair and Metamedia
16. ‘No Issues Without Media: The Changing Politics of Public Controversy in Digital Societies’, Noortje Marres, University of Warwick (UK)
17. ‘The Poetics and Political Economy of Repair’, Steven J. Jackson and Lara Houston, Cornell University (USA)
18. ‘Metamedia’, Jeremy Swartz, University of Oregon (USA)
Appendix
Notes on Contributors
Index