Entrevista. Books and culture in the digital age

This is a relatively short but dense and ambitious book which attempts to provide some conceptual tools with which to approach the transformations to contemporary cultural life wrought by the inexorable rise of what are still termed 'new media'. Actively and explicitly eschewing, what, in the words of the Science and Technology Studies scholar Steve Woolgar,

Digital Sİege, 2021

Media sociology is an effort to reveal the micro and macro effects that changes and transformations in the structure of the media cause on the social structure. Media sociology, which focuses on the products and consumers of printed or digital media and tries to identify and solve the problems that arise in the relationship between the media and society with a sociological approach, utilizes both cultural studies and critical theory as well as system theory. Media sociology studies, which have become an important sub-branch of sociology today, have saved the media from being a dependent variable and enabled it to be recognized as an independent institution on its own. Since it was accepted that “life is digital” in the 21st century, the center of media sociology studies shifted to digital technologies and the digital society created by using these technologies. This study aims to reveal the definition of media sociology, its scope, studies that can be conducted in this field, and the concepts and theories that can be employed in these studies. Our study, which aims to fill the deficiency of comprehensive research in the field of media sociology, is based on the literature review as its method. We assume that our study, which explores the approaches and discussions that can be a guide in media sociology studies by compiling them from a certain perspective, will make an important contribution to the literature.

Matrizes, 2009

Este artigo examina de maneira crítica alguns dos argumentos e contra-argumentos direcionados à Sociedade da Informação. É dada especial atenção às origens da visão predominante sobre sociedades que são cada vez mais dependentes de tecnologias da informação e da comunicação e do processamento de informações. Embora alguns pensadores entendam que esse fato está intimamente associado com sociedades cada vez mais informadas, o presente artigo destaca algumas das perspectivas mais críticas a esse respeito. Questiona-se também se, à luz da expansão da Internet e como celeiro de novas plataformas digitais, haveria evidência de alguma mudança sustentável nas relações de poder que pudesse gerar maior igualdade. Abstct This paper critically examines some of the claims and counterclaims about the Information Society. It gives particular attention to the origins of the predominant vision of societies that are every more dependent on information and communication technologies and the processing of information. Though some assume that this is intimately associated with increasingly knowledgeable societies, this paper highlights some of the more critical perspectives on this view. It also considers whether, in the light of the spread of the Internet and as host of new digital platforms, there is evidence of any sustainable shift in power relations that might yield greater equality

International Journal for Innovation Education and Research, 2019

This paper relies on digital ethnography as a methodological frame and addresses the cyberspace as a context for the research of social and discursive interactions. Mediatization is taken as a key concept for the investigation of cultural practices that involve digital technologies. The assumptions are supported by the study of the case of “Know your meme”, a website dedicated to find and document memes and viral phenomena. Grounded on a critical view of the interrelations between digital media, communication and society, it pinpoints remix and multimodality as two of the main stylistic resources employed in meaning-making processes. The analysis suggests that the contemporary subject resorts to digital media affordances and the immediateness of internet communication to create/share memes in response to offline events. It also considers that featuring memes as objects in a curator’s page turn these texts into social-cultural artifacts. Assuming a dialogic point of view, the discuss...

Mass Communication and Society, 2008

Used with permission. Chattopadhyay 1 Angharad N. Valdivia, Ed. A Companion to Media Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005, 590 pp., .

International Journal of Criminology and Sociology, 2020

The establishment of a new dominant technological order is caused by the growth dynamics of the digital media space-an important component of the global media space, the development of which is a natural stage in the era of electronic communications. The media space is a sophisticated self-organising system and is a part, a subsystem of the information and communication universe as a set of all systems, one way or another related to communication processes. The novelty of the study is determined by the postulate that the media space constitutes a component of the global space of social life of people, generates and organises the production and consumption of information in various forms of social communication; this is a special reality. The authors show that its development is facilitated by the growth of the variety of communication technologies that accompanied the historical and cultural development of society. The paper shows that the media space is described by several components that determine social life: the technosphere built on information and communication technology; an infosphere based on information network highways; socio-infosphere, which includes information flows and organised structures that control the processes of their creation and consumption and affect the state of social intelligence. The practical significance of the study is that the media space is not only a retransmitter of information, but also its producer, in connection with which it acts as a complex, global system that contains all socio-cultural components capable of developing information prerequisites and requests and catering to the information needs by all possible communication means.

2023

The famous 1962 precedent at the Restrictive Practices Court of the United Kingdom, "Books are different," is still the reasoning behind many cultural policies around the world, building on long-standing assumptions surrounding "the book." As this suggests, the "difference" of the book as a unique form of cultural (rather than economic) production has acquired a powerful status. But are books still different? In (somewhat provocatively) asking this question from a network-oriented and interdisciplinary perspective (book studies/literary studies), this Element inquires into the notion of "difference" in relation to books. Challenging common notions of "bibliodiversity," it reconsiders the lack of diversity in the publishing industry. It also engages with the diversifying potentials of the digital literary sphere, offering a case study of Bernardine Evaristo's industry activities and activism. The Element concludes with thoughts on bookishness, affect, and networked practice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Scope of the Course: The effects of media on the social, economic, political and cultural spheres of life have been increasing significantly since the nineteenth century. In fact, there is a curious overlap between the transformation of the public sphere and the rise of mass media. This course will examine the points of juncture between the public sphere and mass media at the intersection of capitalism, liberal democracy and patriarchy. More specifically, this course will investigate the concepts of the public and the private; the social and the intimate as well as the relationship between public morality, private morality and media; the 'public,' 'publicness' and communications; alternative publics and alternative media through the lenses of different theories of the public sphere. In this course, we will read The main questions this course will ask are: 1) What are the junction points between history and theory in the transformation of the public sphere and the rise of the mass media? 2) What are the (non-)normative implications of different theories of the public sphere on the understanding of media? 3) How can one conceptualize alternative mass media and social media in terms of public-private distinction? 4) What is the significance of public sphere in the mediation of human communication? Why? At the end of the term the students will have accumulated knowledge of the theories of public sphere with a historical perspective; acquired theoretical and methodological knowledge, which are required to assess the effect of the mass media in the construction, narrowing down, extension and transformation of the public sphere; and developed a critical perspective on the function of the mass media in the transformation of the distinction between the public and the private in late-capitalist societies. The course also aims to investigate the possibilities for revealing the immediacy of the connections between the " theoretical " and everyday experiences through communication. In this respect, the course will also offer a venue for a collaborative autoethnographic preliminary study that involves cooperative research agendas of the students and the lecturer. The collaborative study, which will center on the question of the differentiations in the way audience/readers understand and communicate through the public-private distinctions will evolve through three lines: 1. The students' and lecturer's daily notes about the weekly discussions on the theoretical approaches, covered in the course with a view to a. their daily experiences b. which media they use most frequently in conveying these experiences and how; 2. The students' and lecturer's interactive readings of and notes on the three films that will be watched throughout Fall 2016; 3. Discussions on cross-cutting reflections of ethnicity, gender, class and age on the way our subjective and cooperative readings on the public-private distinctions.