John Thompson: The media and modernity. A social
theory of the media
1. Communication and social context
Communication media
Austin: speech act theory
Here:
Uses of communication
media
General aspect and
attributes of
communication media
Characteristics of ‘mass
communication’
The reordering of space
and time
Communication,
appropriation and
everyday life
Reception as routine
Skilled accomplishment
Hermeneutic process
Social + technical dimensions.
Always a contextualised social phenomenon: embedded in
social contexts, with structuring impact on communication
Communication as a form of action. But Austin does not
contextualise communication and speech acts.
Social phenomena as purposive actions carried out in structured
social contexts. Within ‘fields of interaction’ (> Bourdieu).
> Power
Communication: a distinctive kind of social activity:
production, transmission and reception of symbolic forms.
Involves the implementation of technical meida; the material
substratum of symbolic forms.
1. Degree of fixation of the symbolic form > storing
capacity
2. > Allows for reproduction
3. Space-time distanciation
4. Encoding and decoding skills
First on the problematic aspects with the term mass
communication/mass media. However to refer to “the
institutionalized production and generalized diffusion of
symbolic goods via the fixation and transmission of information
or symbolic content”. Not unique to mass communication, but
set of features typical and important.
1. Technical and institutional means of production and
diffusion
2. Commodification of symbolic forms
3. Structured break between production and reception of
symbolic forms
4. Extends the availability of symbolic forms in space and
time
5. The public circulation of symbolic forms. Products
available to a plurality of recipients.
Despatialized simultaneity: simultaneity does not necessarily
presupposed locality.
 how individuals experience spatial and temporal
aspects of life, > Meyorwitz: no sense of place.
 How individuals experience the past and and the world
beyond their immediate milieu. Mediated historicity
and worldliness.
 People’s sense of belonging. Mediated sociality.
1. Structuralism, semiotics and co.
2. Earlier empirical traditions of media research
3. Later various approaches using a variety of methods.
Routine and practical activity. Situated activity: located in
specific social-historical contexts. Integral part of everyday life.
Extremely diverse, but generally based on learning. May be
socially differentiated.
Process of interpretations. Gadamer: not a presuppositionless
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> Meaning
activity, but an active, creative process.
According to individual interpretations. Complex, shifting
phenomenon.
Also part of reflection, and self-reflection. Self-formation and
self-understanding. Constructing a sense of self.
3. The rise of mediated interaction
Development of
communication media
Three types of interaction
Face-to-face
Mediated interaction
Mediated quasi-interaction
Rise of mediated
interaction
The social organization of
mediated quasiinteraction
Communication media
Technically mediated
quasi-interaction
Three sets of space-time
coordinates
Monological character
> affecting patterns of social interaction. Not simply new
networks of relationships transmissions, but creates new forms
of action and interaction. Separated from physical locale.
Face-to-face; mediated; mediated quasi-interaction
Context of co-presence. Consequences for type of interaction.
Saturated with multiplicity of symbolic cues.
Letter writing and telephone conversations. And obviously a lot
more today than Thompson mentions. Involves the use of a
technical medium, narrowing of symbolic cues. Individuals
more dependent on their own interpretations and contexts.
Social relations established by mass media. Produced for an
indefinite range of potential recipients. Monological interaction.
Thompson emphesises that these situations blur, but it must be
said that these crude typification is even more problematic than
before, that is, mostly relations between mediated and mediated
quasi-interaction > paper on conceptualising personal media.
Thompson, however, does take precautions, such as further
development of new communication technologies. My point is
still valid, Thompson’s typification might be too crude.
Not necessarily at the expense of face-to-face interaction. But
modern social life increasingly made up of forms of interaction,
which are not f2f. “The interactoin mix of social life has
changed” (: 87).
References to Erving Goffman’s presentation of self: front and
back regions. Individuals constantly adapting behaviour to
shifting boundaries.
Profound impact on nature of front and back regions and
relations between them.
Symbolic forms produced in one context, and received in
multiplicity of other contexts.
1. space-time coordinates of the context of production
2. of the televisual message itself
3. of the diverse contexts of reception
Space-time interpolation: continuous process of splicing
together these three sets of coordinates. Example: viewing
television: recipients splicing togheter the different sets of
space-time coordinates.
Structural asymmetry between producers and receivers. No
reflexive monitoring of the other’s responses. Recepients at
liberty not to pay attention. Quasi-participation.
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The established social
relationships
Action at a distance (1):
Acting for distant others
(2): Responsive action in
distant contexts
Extended mediazation
Concerted forms of
responsive action
New social and political
field
More complicated patterns
‘Tele-visibility’, combines audio-visual presence with spatiotemporal distance. Personalities whose traits are defined largely
within the front-region of the production sphere. Recipients,
anonymous and invisible spectators of performace.
Nevertheless crucial for producers.
1. Recipient address: direct and indirect
2. Mediated everyday activity
3. Media events
4. Fictionalized action
Discursive elaboration: the responsive actions are not part of
the quasi-intreraction as such, but refined and commented in the
context of the recipients.
Media messages are re-mediated, self-referentiality.
Appropriation of the media messages. According to social
attributes of the audience, varies.
1. Concerted but uncoordinated responsive action
2. Explicitly intended coordinated recipient response
(laughter boxes)
3. Organized or coordinated responsive action (anti-war
movements, Eastern Europe 1989),
Media not simply reporting from the world – actively involved
in constituting the social and political world. Shape the course
of events.
New kind of field: f2f interaction, mediated interaction,
mediated quasi-interaction intersecting in complex ways.
> Contributes in the complexity and unpredictability of the
modern world.
7. Self and experience in a mediated world
Modernity
The self as a symbolic
project
A hermeneutics-inspired
perspective
Communication media
Negative consequences
Reflexive and open-ended self-formation. Non-local
knowledge. The capacity of experience disconnected from the
activity of encountering. How related mediated experiences to
the practical contexts of our day-to-day lives?
Thompson claims to represent an account of the self
fundamentally different from that of structural linguistics etc,
such as Althusser and Foucault’s: techniques of the self: “the
ways in which individuals are turned into subjects whi think
and act in accordance with the possibilities that are laid out in
advance”. However, is Thompson’s perspective very different
from that of Foucault?
The self as a symbolic project that the individual actively
constructs. A narrative of self-identity. Unofficial biographers
of ourself (the link to Foucault here seems evident?).
> The importance of the development of communication media:
the process of self-formation dependent on acvcess to mediated
forms of communication.
Enriches and accenturates the reflexive organization of the self.
Coherent and continuosly revised biographical narrative.
1. The mediated intrusion of ideological messages into the
practical contexts of everyday life. Thompson’s accont
of ideology; the ways in which symbolic forms serve to
establish and sustain relations of domination. The role
of the media in such ideological processes. How these
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Non-reciprocal intimacy
at a distance
Desequestration and the
mediation of experience
Hermeneutics and
phenomenological trad.
Mediated quasi-interaction
New options, new
burdens: living in a
mediated world
messages are incorporated into the lives of the
recipients.
2. The double-bind of mediated dependency: “It renders
this reflexive organization increasingly dependent on
systems over which the individual has relatively little
control. Part of the whole modern societies thing. See
also Ulrich Beck: individualization and
institutionalization.
3. The disorienting effect of symbolic overload: the
confrontation of countless narratives of self-formation
and visions of world. Necessitates a selective approach.
The importance of significant others (Katz & Lazarsfel,
Radway). The interplay of complexity and expertise.
4. The absorption of self in mediated quasi-interaction:
individuals relying too heavily on mediated symbolic
materials.
> opportunity to explore interpersonal relationships in a
vicarious way. Extensive on fan-culture.
Complex reordering of spheres of experience. Institutional
sequestration of experience co-developing with the massive
expansion of mediated forms of experience. Also makes
available new forms of experiences.
Following Dilthey.
Distinction between two types of experience:
1. Lived experience (Erlebnis): situated, ‘real-life’
experiences. Not mediated through technical media.
2. Mediated experience: acquired through mediated
interaction and mediated quasi-interaction
1. Mediated experiences are distant spatially. Unlikely to
impinge directly on the recipient’s lives.
2. Takes place in a context which is different from the
context in which the event actually occurs.
Recontextualised experience.
3. Relevance structure. Mediated experiences as a
discontinous sequence of experiences with varying
degrees of relevance to the self.
4. Despatialized communality. No longer linked to a
sharing of a common locale.
Thompson claims to present a view of the self that differs from
that of much postmodern theory (the dissolved self). Still
transformed conditions of self-formation. The self: reflexively
organized symbolic project, increasingly unconstrained by
location in context of day-to-day life. The self as opened up by
media messages. Living as a continuous interweaving of
different forms of experience. New opportunities, options,
arenas for self-experimenting.
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