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Summary New Media Theory UPDATED CONTENT Study Guide 2024
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Concepts:Theory
- A framework for understanding
- Gives us a language for what is not yet understood
Idealism
- Ideas, values, and cultural beliefs shape media content and its influence on society
- Suggests that media is not just a reflection of reality but plays an active role in
promoting certain ideologies, shaping perceptions, and guiding societal norms
based on idealistic or aspirational views.
- The 1995 AOL commercial portrays the idealism of the early internet era.
- The ideal vs. the material (materialist new media theory stands against idealism)
Immateriality
- Digital experiences and interactions occurring over the internet lack a physical or tangible
presence.
- This idea is rooted in the notion that the internet, as a virtual space, is primarily
composed of data, code, and digital representations rather than physical objects of
locations.
- Materiality is essential to understanding the relation of technology and society.
- In a physical sense, screens, cables.
- Clouds (data centers) are a good example of how immaterial it can feel
while it has a huge ecological footprint with human and machine labor.
- Media technologies do not come out of thin air:
- They have a deep history: colonialism, imperialism, etc.
- Scientific developments: for example developments that enabled
the creation of the cable
Technological Determinism
- The belief that technology develops according to its own logic and has a deterministic
impact on society.
- In this view
- Technology is seen as the primary driver of social change, human
engagement, and social organization.
- Technology evolves according to its own inherent logic, independent of
social influences.
- Technology is considered the key factor for driving historical and social
transformations.
- Example: industrial revolution or the internet are seen as the
technological innovations that fundamentally reshaped society by
determining new ways of living, working, and interacting.
, - Human agency is minimized or secondary; humans are seen as adapting to
the constraints and affordances of technology rather than actively shaping
it.
- Criticized since it suggests a one-way cause-and-effect relationship.
- Overlooks the ways in which social, political, economic, and
cultural factors shape technological development and use.
Social Constructivism (social construction of technology, SCOT)
- Contrasting perspective, emphasizing that technology is not an autonomous force but is
deeply embedded within social contexts and shaped by human choices, values, and
actions.
- In this view
- Technology is socially constructed, meaning that its development, design,
and use are influenced by social processes, including negotiations,
conflicts, power struggles, and cultural values.
- Seen as a result of choices made by different social groups
(engineers, users, policymakers, companies, etc.)
- Human agency is emphasized in shaping technology. Humans rather than
technology determine how technology is created, implemented, and used.
- Technological artifacts’ significance is contingent upon social
contexts.
- Different social groups interpret and use technology in varied ways,
leading to multiple meanings and uses of the same technological artifact
(interpretative flexibility). This idea suggests that the way technology is
perceived and utilized can change depending on the social context and the
users’ needs and values.
- Criticized since it may overemphasize human agency and neglect the ways
in which certain technological features and material properties can have
deterministic effects while it downplays ways in which technological
innovations can bring about profound changes that shape societies.
Actor-Network Theory (ANT) - Bruno Latour
- Balances both views
- This approach suggests that technological development is neither fully autonomous nor
entirely socially constructed: rather, technology and society mutually shape each other.
- Technologies can enable certain behaviors or social changes, but those changes
are also guided by human agency, norms, arrangements, and practices.
- This theory offers a way to synthesize determinism and scot, positing that both humans
and non-humans are ‘actors’ that participate in networks of relationships. (suggesting that
technological effects emerge from complex networks of interactions between human and
non-human actors)
, - While technologies may have certain affordances and constraints, human choices about
their development and deployment are often influenced by political, economic, and social
power dynamics.
Instrumentalism
- Technology is neutral: it’s just a tool to achieve specific tasks
- Human-driven: people control technology to fulfill their goals
- Example: An interface is designed simply to solve a problem (like easy navigation),
without considering social or cultural factors.
- SCOT sees technology as socially shaped, while instrumentalism sees it as a
neutral tool used by humans.
The User Turn
- People appropriate and shape media and technology through use
- A conceptual shift in cultural studies that emphasizes the active role of users in
shaping the meaning, function, and impact of media and technology.
- The user turn redirects attention to:
- User agency by recognizing users as active participants rather than passive
recipients.
- Explores how people engage with, interpret, and repurpose media and
technology in ways that may diverge from or resist intended uses or
meanings.
- Understanding users’ practices, interactions, and routines with technologies in
their daily lives. This includes the creative and often unexpected ways users
adopt, adapt, or hack technologies and how these activities shape cultural and
social meanings.
- Considering the ways in which users contribute to the production of content and
meaning.
- Includes fan communities, user-generated content, social media activities,
and other forms of participatory culture where the boundaries between
production and consumption blur.
- Note: SCOT focuses more broadly on the social groups and contexts that
influence technology's development and significance, while user agency
emphasizes the individual or collective actions of users in repurposing or giving
meaning to technologies after they have been created.
- SCOT looks at how technology is socially constructed, while the user turn
looks at how technology is socially reshaped by users through daily
interactions and uses.
The Medium Theory
- McLuhan argued that different media technologies (like print, radio, television, and the
internet) shape how people think, communicate, and interact with each other.
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