DIGITAL COMMUNICATION
Digital Communication and Media Linguistics
-Aleksandra Gnach, Wibke Weber, Martin Engebretsen & Daniel Perrin
,Chapter 1: Starting Point: Digital Society and Media Linguistics
Social facts (faits sociaux)
= The phenomena which make us act in specific ways.
Social structures:
= The social institutions and patterns of institutionalized relationships that define our
society and enable or constrict what we do daily.
• Small structures → Micro
= Individuals, relationships, families
• Medium structures → Meso
= ethnic groups, political parties, communities, organizations
• Large systems → Macro
= Economies, legal systems, nations
Two types of stratification systems:
= Reflect and foster specific values and influence an individual’s behaviors and beliefs.
• Closed systems
→ Almost no change in social positions (e.g., Indian caste systems).
• Open systems
→ Permit movement and interaction between layers.
Agency
= Individuals’ capacity to act independently and make free choices.
Giddens argues:
Do not see individual agency and social structures as opposites.
→ Structures influence an individual’s autonomy, they are built, maintained, and adapted
through agency.
Practical consciousness
= Mutual knowledge
Discursive consciousness
= Reflecting on how we used to do things and decide how we want to do them now.
Social structures consists of 2 dimensions:
• Rules implicated when social systems are reproduced or altered;
• Resources that people can draw upon while doing things in society.
Social change has many varied causes:
• Technology
• Social institutions
• Populations
• Environment
Most dominant theories on the relationship between technology and society:
, • Determinism
- Technological determinism: technology develops independently from society
- Social determinism: society drives the evolution of technology
• Instrumentalism
= Technology is a neutral tool. Reflects the needs of society but also problems.
• Substantivism
= Technology is ruled by its own logic, it has its own values (good/bad) and people cannot
control the impact of technology on society.
• Social constructivism
= Different society / people use technologies differently.
Space of flows
=
Networked individualism
= The new form of sociability emerging in digital societies. The classical model of social
arrangements is replaced with networks of locally and globally connected individuals.
People must actively network and connect with others because the connections are loose
and replaceable.
Digital divide
= The discrepancy between those who, for technical, political, social, geographic, or
economic reasons, have both access to and the capability to use information and
communication technologies (ICTs), and those who do not.
Digital divides exist at different levels:
• Within countries and between countries
• Between rural and urban populations
• Between generations
• Between ethnic groups
• Between men and women
Wilson defines four components of social access:
• Financial access
→ Determines whether an individual or a social group can afford to be connected.
• Cognitive access
→ Indicates whether people are trained to use hardware and software.
• Content use
→ Characterizes whether there is sufficient material available to fulfill people’s needs.
• Political access
→ Takes into consideration whether users have an influence on the institutions regulating
the technologies they use.
In order to be an active part in society and fulfill their roles in critical and responsible ways,
citizens need to be educated and informed.
→ People without access are systematically excluded from participation.
, = Worrying because studies indicate that digital divides propound preexisting inequalities
and can be regarded as a fundamental aspect of social inequity.
The pandemic has accelerated the uptake of digital solutions, tools, and services, speeding
up the global digital transformation, and strengthening the market positions of a few mega-
digital platforms. They have benefitted from the shift of many activities to the digital space
and their ability to extract, control and analyze data and transform it into artificial
intelligence (AI) solutions that can be monetized.
Media can stand for:
• Institutions and enterprises (media outlets, news organizations, broadcasting
stations, streaming services, etc.)
• Their channels (e.g., print media, radio and television programs, video-sharing
platforms, social media platforms)
• The material form of the products (newspapers, podcasts videos, books, films, etc.)
• The physical “containers,” that is, the physical devices used for production,
distribution, and consumption of media content (paper, television set, mobile
device, computer)
→ Complex because of its many layers of meaning and its different use in various academic,
economic, and societal context.
When we talk about new media, we take these various facets into consideration and use the
term in a holistic sense, which means that all these facets are intimately interwoven and
contribute to the whole: an epochal turning point that affects all aspects of how we use
media to communicate.
Remediation
= Every medium is in a continuous interplay with older media by imitating, highlighting
incorporating, refashioning, or even absorbing them.
Example:
The telephone has evolved from a large wooden wall telephone to a mobile computing
device with camera, video, music, gaming, voice assistant, and other multimedia features.
New media
= A shift from analog to digital media triggered by new telecommunication and information
technologies.
Also, the mix between existing cultural conventions and the conventions of software.
Six key characteristics that define new media:
• Digital
• Hypertextual
• Interactive
• Virtual
• Simulated
• Networked
Networked
