Open peer commentary on the article “Do the Media Fail to Represent Reality? A Constructivist and Second-order Critique of the Research on Environmental Media Coverage and Its Normative Implications” by Julia Völker & Armin Scholl. Upshot: The present commentary is not intended as a criticism of the arguments presented in Julia Völker and Armin Scholl’s target article. I very much agree with these arguments. I only wish to draw attention to the fact that Völker and Scholl are not (...) writing about global warming or climate change; their article suggests that communication and media studies are in a state of crisis. (shrink)

Both interpersonal and mass media communication is demanding for competence of communicators. The aim of this study was to determine the dimensions of interpersonal communicative competence. First, a total of 23 skills and traits were identified that are by various authors related to interpersonal communicative competence. Then, a research instrument named Interpersonal Communication Competence Inventory (ICCI) was developed for the measurement of those skills and traits. After evaluation of the ICCI scales, their total scores were factor analyzed (...) in an attempt to identify the possible dimensions of interpersonal communication competence. The results of the factor analyses are presented in a schematic model and theoretically elaborated. Finally, more insight is given into various aspects of competent interpersonal communication, and the potential uses of the model presented in this study are outlined. (shrink)

(2001). A sociolinguistic approach to applied epistemology: Examining technocratic values in global 'knowledge' policy. Social Epistemology: Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 155-169.

This monograph examines the past, present, and potential relationship between American pragmatism and communication research. The contributors provide a bridge between communication studies and philosophy, subjects often developed somewhat in isolation from each other. Addressing topics, such as qualitative and quantitative research, ethics, media research, and feminist studies, the chapters in this volume: *discuss how a pragmatic, Darwinian approach to inquiry has guided and might further guide communication research; *advocate a functional view of (...) class='Hi'>communication, based on Dewey's mature notion of transaction; *articulate a pragmatist's aesthetics and connect it to Deweyan democracy; *discuss the similarities and differences between Dewey's notion of inquiry and the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer; *apply accommodation theory, linked to symbolic interactionism and more generally to the social behaviorism of George H. Mead and his followers, to media research; *interpret media-effects evidence in light of pragmatist ideas about inquiry; and *argue that pragmatism theorizes about despair and life's sense of the tragic. This book is written to be readily accessible to students and professional academics within and outside the field of communication studies without extensive training in specialized areas of communication study. (shrink)

Theory of Mind (ToM), the cognitive capacity to attribute internal mental states to oneself and others, is a crucial component of social skills. Its formal study has become important, witness recent research on reasoning and information update by intelligent agents, and some proposals for its formal modelling have put forward settings based on Epistemic Logic (EL). Still, due to intrinsic idealisations, it is questionable whether EL can be used to model the high-order cognition of ‘real’ agents. This manuscript proposes a (...) framework that takes visibility, memory, perspective and communication as the main factors underpinning mental attributions. This is more in-line with findings in cognitive science and allows us to model well-known False-Belief Tasks that are typically used in testing people's ToM. We discuss some of the framework's technical features, arguing why it does justice to empirical observations. (shrink)

This article explores some current transformations of the social. It argues for a shift from a model of sociality based on community towards a network sociality. This shift is particularly visible in urban spaces and in the cultural industries. However, it seems to become paradigmatic more widely of the information society. The article is to be read as a cultural hypothesis. In the first part I introduce some examples that document the rise of a network sociality. Most of these examples (...) are drawn from a two-year ethnographic study of London's new media. The second part consists of a critique of some theoretical accounts of contemporary transformations of sociality. The third part is an attempt to outline the concept of network sociality. It is a form of sociality that is ephemeral but intense, it is informational and technological, it combines work and play, it is disembedded and generic, and it emerges in the context of individualization. (shrink)

_'HyperReality is a technological capability like nanotechnology, human cloning and artificial intelligence. Like them, it does not as yet exist in the sense of being clearly demonstrable and publicly available. Like them, it is maturing in laboratories where the question "if" has been replaced by the question "when?" and like them, the implications of its appearance as a basic infrastructure technology are profound and merit careful consideration.'_ - _Nobuyoshi Terashima_ _What comes after the Internet?_ Imagine a world where it is (...) difficult to tell if the person standing next to you is real or a virtual reality, and whether they have human intelligence or artificial intelligence; a world where people can appear to be anything they want to be. _HyperReality makes this possible._ _HyperReality_ offers a window into the world of the future, an interface between the natural and artificial. Nobuyoshi Terashima led the team that developed the prototype for _HyperReality_ at Japan's ATT laboratories. John Tiffin studied they way HyperReality would create a new communications paradigm. Together with a stellar list of contributors from around the globe who are engaged in researching different aspects of HyperReality, they offer the first account of this extraordinary technology and its implications. This fascinating book explores the defining features of HyperReality: what it is, how it works and how it could become to the information society what mass media was to the industrial society. It describes ongoing research into areas such as the design of virtual worlds and virtual humans, and the role of intelligent agents. It looks at applications and ways in which HyperReality may impact on fields such as translation, medicine, education, entertainment and leisure. What are its implications for lifestyles and work, for women and the elderly: Will we grow to prefer the virtual worlds we create to the physical world we adapt to? HyperReality at the beginning of the third millennium is like steam power at the beginning of the nineteenth century and radio at the start of the twentieth century, an idea that has been shown to work but has yet to be applied. This book is for anyone concerned about the future and the effects of technology on our lives. (shrink)

Part of the Studies in Crime and Public Policy series, this book, written by one of the top philosophers of punishment, examines the main trends in penal theorizing over the past three decades. Duff asks what can justify criminal punishment, and then explores the legitimacy of actual practices by examining what would count as adequate justification for them. Duff argues that a "communicative conception of punishment," which he presents as a third way between consequentialist and retributive theories, offers the (...) most fruitful way of understanding punishment's meaning and justification. Duff addresses such questions as how much sentences should be constrained by proportionality requirements; what modalities of punishment best communicate their intended meaning; and what decisionmaking procedures he envisions. This book will appeal to criminologists, philosophers, and others interested in theories of punishment. (shrink)

Shapcott investigates the question of justice in a culturally diverse world, asking if it is possible to conceive of a universal or cosmopolitan community in which justice to difference is achieved. Justice to difference is possible, according to Shapcott, by recognising the particular manner in which different humans identify themselves. Such recognition is most successfully accomplished through acts of communication, and in particular, conversation. The accounts of understanding developed by H. G. Gadamer provide a valuable way forward in this (...) field. The philosophical hermeneutic account of conversation allows for the development of a level of cosmopolitan solidarity that is both 'thin' and universal, and which helps to provide a more just resolution of the tension between the values of community and difference. Students and scholars of international relations, international ethics and philosophy will be interested in this original study. (shrink)

The modern world, described by theorists of various fields as being subject to a continuous secularization process, is increasingly being perceived as the keeper of a mythical fund. The anthropological analysis of modernity invites to a new way of discussing and using myth, ritual, the sacred, religion in order to describe a significant modern experience. This experience typical to the modern man is mediated, and often even created by the mass media. Such an experience would not be perceptible outside (...) the lay context of the modern world, characterized by the presence of a weak transcendence. This favors the development of a mass culture, with various subcultures, as well as various professional cultures, in which a search for authenticity opens a wide space for the cohabitation of traditional religions and the weak forms of experience and manifestation of the sacred. In order to have this discussion I have chosen one of the most representative Romanian authors in the field of mass media anthropology. His analyses persuade us that the mass media is, among others, an instrument of symbolic construction of reality, and plays in the modern society the same part that myth used to play in traditional societies. (shrink)

Studies of epistemic communities and collaborative research in the social sciences have deepened the understanding of how science works, and more specifically how the social dimensions of scientific practice both enable and impede social scientists in realizing their epistemic goals. Two types of studies of epistemic communities are distinguished: general theories of epistemic communities aim to construct accounts of theoretical change applicable to all social scientific specialties, whereas historical studies emphasize the contingencies that affect specific social scientific (...) disciplines, subfields, or institutions. Although collaborative research plays a less pronounced role in the social sciences than in the natural sciences, collaboration has enabled social scientists to investigate topics that would otherwise be difficult to investigate. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to look at some of the issues surrounding access to and the use of new media technologies by Indigenous people in Australia and question why this is an area of study that receives a marginal focus in academic work.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on previous literature in the area of information and communications technology (ICT) adoption and social exclusion, this paper combines the methodological frameworks adopted by hegemony research and more general studies of new media.FindingsThe (...) paper discusses the impacts of new media use by Indigenous communities, within the framework of discussions about a “global Digital Age”. The paper also briefly looks at the social implications of new media adoption.Originality/valueIt questions the assumption that adoption and use of new media is for the “good” or “benefit” of all. It will be of value to researchers of ICT adoption by Indigenous communities. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the causes influencing the length and duration of online media discourse, which may also mean its “quality” or a kind of “attractiveness”. This goal sets out the issues and basic research questions related to these causes. What causes some discourses take a long time and others end as soon as they begin? What makes one discourse attract the attention of other participants in the discussion, and what causes less interest in the (...) proposed topics? In order to obtain answers to the above questions we study the structure of the text, stylistics, topics of discourses and social interaction of forum participants. (shrink)

The emergence of a `new' discourse on science in connection with events to do with the environment, food safety or public health has caused questions to be raised concerning the suitability of the triangular communication model generally applied to scientific popularization, i.e. in which there is an `intermediary' discourse plying between science and the general public. This `traditional' discourse would appear, then, to co-exist alongside the new discourse. The pragmatic functions of these two separate discourses on science are compared (...) here by looking at the linguistic and discursive variations which characterize their communicative and cognitive dimensions. In the new discourse on science, which has come to light over the past few years, the strict task of `popularizing' appears to have been dropped in favour of explaining the social stakes of the issues in question: thus the typically didactic and scientific nature of the cognitivo-discursive category, explanation can be seen to make way for a different type of explanation, which uses an interdiscursive memory bank built upon the productions of the mass media destined for the general public. (shrink)

Analyzes twentieth-century media and cultural theories as they relate to changes in political economy, communication technology, popular culture and collective consciousness in the United States. It argues that much of contemporary media environment is operating as Western capitalist media have for more than a century, making these theories more relevant than ever.

This article examines strands of an intellectual history in Media and Cultural Studies and Science and Technology Studies in both of which researchers were prompted to take up ethnography. Three historical phases of this process are identified. The move between phases was the result of particular displacements and contestations of perspective in the research procedures within each discipline. Thus concerns about appropriate contextualization led to the eventual embrace of anthropological ethnographic methods. The article traces the subsequent emergence (...) of a ‘crisis of context’ in the deployment of ethnography within these disciplines. The analysis of these historical changes is informed by a particular depiction of Euro-American knowledge conventions. The article suggests that the limits currently perceived for ethnography are a specific instance of the more general limits now recognized for these knowledge conventions. (shrink)

This article presents a model and a case study of the narrative structures that are present in the interactive media design of multimedia applications in the mass media. As basic categories for the history and structure of media, we employ the model of the modes of the physical, analog, and digital presentation/representation. In this case study of the online edition of the New York Times, we have the case of a newspaper that in the digital edition employs (...) multi-media applications. Contrasting the traditional concept of “narrativity” with the current status quo of the digital media outlets, we will examine the specific conditions of the multimedia applications in the mass media with this sample case of the New York Times. As narrative structure of interactive design in multimedia for mass communication, we analyze the types of narrative media and general narrativity in the New York Times with the background of its processes of interactivity and media convergence. (shrink)

In the days of global warming and BSE, science is increasingly a public issue. This book provides a theoretical framework which allows us to understand why and how scientists address the general public. The author develops the argument that turning to the public is not simply a response to inaccurate reporting by journalists or to public curiosity, nor a wish to gain recognition and additional funding. Rather, it is a tactic to which the scientific community are pushed by certain "internal" (...) crisis situations. Bucchi examines three cases of scientists turning to the public: the cold fusion case, the COBE/Big Bang issue and Louis Pasteur's public demonstration of the anthrax vaccine, a historical case of "public science." Finally, Bucchi presents his unique model of communications between science and the public, carried out through the media. This is a thoughtful and wide-ranging treatment of complex contemporary issues, touching upon the history and sociology of science, communication and media studies. Bucchi's theories on scientific communication in the media are a valuable contribution to the current debate on this subject. (shrink)

This article presents, discusses and analyses data from a Danish empirical study of authentic job interviews. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, as well as other fields, the author explores the relationship between success in job interviews and communicative style. The recontextualization of lifeworld resources is approached through both qualitative and quantitative analyses of spoken language. The author demonstrates that certain communicative styles and recontextualizations formed by a combination of lifeworld and job-related perspectives are more successful in job interviews; (...) on the basis of sociolinguistic evidence, he argues that these styles and recontextualizations are products of general processes of socialization rather than products of formal education. (shrink)

This monograph presents a synthesis and reconstruction of Rudolf Arnheim’s theory of media. Combining both Arnheim’s well-known writings on film and radio with his later work on the psychology of art, the author presents a coherent approach to the problem of the nature of a medium, space and time, and the differentia between different media. The latent ontological commitments of Arnheim’s theories is drawn out by affirming Arnheim’s membership in the Brentano school of Austrian philosophy, which allows his (...) theories to be clarified and strengthened, particularly with the metaphysical writings of Roman Ingarden. The resulting theory is relational, portraying essential medial differences with neutral criteria and allowing for a rigorous definition of a medium. The way in which a medium is based on the inherent dispositions of medial materials creates a highly appealing theory that is determinate without being deterministic. The theory is thus highly timely as people in media studies seek to address the determinate nature of media after the post-medium condition. The book will appeal to researchers and graduate students in cultural and media studies as well as architecture and design. (shrink)

This paper looks at how the strategies of mediaand cultural studies can be applied to thehealth studies field. This relationship,however, has been met with resistance due to anumber of status debates. We argue theimportance of fostering links between these`disciplines' namely because the definition ofwhat constitutes `health' has been broadenedand is inscribed in most forms of popularmedia. Using the example of the `health andlifestyle' debate, we argue that the mediainforms cultural understandings aboutrequirements for living and is therefore acrucial area (...) of analysis for health studies(and cultural/media studies) students. We arealso concerned with analysing how the mediacontributes to the construction and regulationof `healthy' subjects making links with publichealth discourses and current debates in thefield of media and health. (shrink)

Idealism, Metaphysics and Community examines the place of idealism in contemporary philosophy, and its relation to problems of metaphysics, political thought, and the study of the history of philosophy. Drawing together contributions from philosophers from several distinct traditions, this book presents a range of perspectives - revealing areas of agreement and disagreement, addressing topics of contemporary discussion, and providing new insights into philosophical idealism. Following an extensive introduction by the editor, and drawing on the work of the Canadian idealist, Leslie (...) Armour, the book is divided into three main parts: Part 1 focuses on the British idealist, F.H.Bradley; Part 2 examines metaphysical issues and idealism, such as the realism/anti-realism debate, the relation of classical and idealist metaphysics, rational psychology, time and eternity, and the divine; Part 3 draws on idealism to address contemporary concerns in ethical theory, political philosophy, social philosophy and culture and the history of philosophy. Presenting new insights into the work of classical authors as well as contemporary philosophers, this book provides a better understanding of classical idealism and addresses important areas of contemporary philosophical, social and political concern. (shrink)

Authenticity, Reception and Media Reality This article deals with the reception of media reality, which is meant to be an alternative mode of consciousness, and with the phenomenon of authenticity and its understanding within media reality. It is also pointed out the distortion in the reception of media reality. As an unifying concept for media education and for the treatment of reception defects it is mentioned media anthropology - an interdisciplinary, respectively trans-disciplinary science, which (...) can provide more consistent re-analyzing of the relationship between man and media as tools for improving his skills. From the methodological point of view the method of epistemological anarchism, Paul Feyerabend's "anything goes" is explained as an epistemological translation tool for developing reviewing competences and reception skills as a whole. We propose to deal the distortion of media reception in different therapeutic ways: from sensory deprivation, through media substitution, organic reception, to transcendence of the observer and imitation of media - meta-creation. In the sense of organic, systemic reception we in fact propose to "copy" the communication strategy of media system in order to extend or set appropriate "epistemic" competences. In the related illustration of this mechanism, the theory of A. Weinstock is applied for setting a research indifference point in the middle of a fictive reception continuum of polarities sympathy and antipathy with media. This paper represents a part of activities, which summarize author's dissertation thesis Reception instruction in the media reality, where there are presented not only analyses and attempted typology of reception instructions, but also case studies with specific proposals for teaching and researching within areas of media ethics and media education. (shrink)

As the recent Ebola outbreak demonstrates, visibility is central to the shaping of political, medical, and socioeconomic decisions. The symposium in this issue of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry explores the uneasy relationship between the necessity of making diseases visible, the mechanisms of legal and visual censorship, and the overall ethics of viewing and spectatorship, including the effects of media visibility on the perception of particular “marked” bodies. Scholarship across the disciplines of communication, anthropology, gender studies, and (...) visual studies, as well as a photographer’s visual essay and memorial reflection, throw light on various strategies of visualization and legitimation and link these to broader socioeconomic concerns. Questions of the ethics of spectatorship, such as how to evoke empathy in the representation of individuals’ suffering without perpetuating social and economic inequalities, are explored in individual, national, and global contexts, demonstrating how disease visibility intersects with a complex nexus of health, sexuality, and global/national politics. A sensible management of visibility—an “ecology of the visible”—can be productive of more viable ways of individual and collective engagement with those who suffer. (shrink)

In the last few years holography has celebrated some important anniversaries: in 2010 the 50th anniversary of the light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (LASER) invention; in 2011 the 40th anniversary of the Nobel Prize awarded to the Hungarian scientist Dennis Gabor for inventing holography and in 2012 the 50th anniversary of the first holograms. Holography can create an accurate visual simulation, with total parallax: a replica of the real object made of light, which has the real object’s visual (...) properties but is immaterial, intangible. The holographic images are volumetric and exist in a real and measurable space, and are not based on the Renaissance perspective, which can represent the three-dimensional physical space in a bi-dimensional one. In the near future, holography-based techniques will open up new possibilities in the visualization domain, allowing new visual worlds. In the meantime, holography can be a useful technical and theoretical tool for reflecting on how our everyday mediascape works. The media can produce, reproduce and transmit bi-dimensional images on flat supports. The media system has a high degree of coherence and the images share similar morphostructural rules, and thus can be transferred from one medium to another without any fundamental information loss: bi-dimensionality and image-support coincidently appear to be the basis of this high level of translatability. Conversely, holograms cannot be displayed through the usual media without losing their peculiarity: they require new displays, new visual media and new genres of communication, even if they hybridize with the existing media. Holography stands apart from the media realm, which in part explains the difficulties of this technique in emerging and integrating into the mediascape. Holography suggests a new visual universe within a culture where visual simulation is the most effective communication system, and it lets us reflect on the need for a more comprehensive definition of ‘image’. It is easy to imagine that future images will also be holographic and that we will communicate more and more through them, in a delicate balance between presence and absence, immediacy and remoteness, materiality and immateriality, matter and energy. Holography can work as a model in science, for example in the study of brain activity in the Holonomic Brain Theory, originated by Austrian psychologist Karl Pribram and initially developed in collaboration with physicist David Bohm to explain human cognition. Holography can also be a model in physics, for example in the idea of the physicist David Bohm of an ‘implicate order’ in the universe, where global structure can be found in each small part – the universe would be a gigantic and wonderfully detailed hologram. More recently, theoretical results on black holes suggest that the idea of a holographic universe is a viable hypothesis. And in the field of quantum gravity and string theories the ‘holographic principle’ suggests that the entire universe can be considered as a two-dimensional information structure, and that the three-dimensional world we observe is but a description at a macroscopic scale and at low energies. (shrink)

Massive geopolitical shifts and dramatic developments in computerization and biotechnology are heralding the transformation from the modern to the postmodern age. We are confronted with altered modes of work, communication, and entertainment; new postindustrial and political networks; novel approaches to warfare; genetic engineering; and even cloning. This compelling book explores the challenges to theory, politics, and human identity that we face on the threshold of the third millennium. It follows on the success of Best and Kellner s two previous (...) books: Postmodern Theory, acclaimed as the best critical introduction to the field, and The Postmodern Turn, which provides a powerful mapping of postmodern developments in the arts, politics, science, and theory. In The Postmodern Adventure, Best and Kellner analyze a broad array of literary, cultural, and political phenomena--from fiction, film, science, and the Internet, to globalization and the rise of a transnational image culture. They use the best of modern and postmodern perspectives to illuminate contemporary life and to strive for a just and viable future. Gold Medal Winner in Philosophy--ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards. (shrink)

Efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus emphasize the central role of citizens’ compliance with self-protective behaviors. Understanding the processes underlying the decision to self-protect is, therefore, essential for effective risk communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the present study, we investigate the determinants of perceived threat and engagement in self-protective measures in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Austria during the first wave of the pandemic. The type of disease and the type of numerical information regarding the disease (...) were manipulated. Participants’ cognitive and emotional risk assessment as well as self-reported engagement in protective behaviors were measured. Results show that worry was the best predictor of perceived threat in all countries. Moreover, a path analysis revealed that worry and perceived threat serially mediated the effect of type of disease on engagement in self-protective behaviors. The numerical framing manipulation did not significantly impact behavior but had a direct effect on worry and an indirect effect on perceived threat. These results are in line with theoretical accounts that identify emotions as a central determinant for risk perception. Moreover, our findings also suggest that effective risk communication during the COVID-19 pandemic should not stress comparisons to other, well-known viral diseases, as this can ultimately reduce self-protective behaviors. (shrink)

This Handbook of Visual Communication explores the key theoretical areas and research methods of visual communication. With chapters contributed by many of the best-known and respected scholars in visual communication, this volume brings together significant and influential work in the discipline. The second edition of this already-classic text has been completely revised to reflect the metamorphosis of communication in the last 15 years and the ubiquity of visual communication in our modern mediated lifestyle. Thriteen major (...) theories of communication are defined by the top experts in their fields: perception, cognition, aesthetics, visual rhetoric, semiotics, cultural studies, ethnography, narrative, media aesthetics, digital media, intertextuality, ethics, and visual literacy. Each of these theory chapters is followed by an exemplar study or two in the area, demonstrating the various methods used in visual communication research as well as the research approaches applicable for specific media types. The Handbook of Visual Communication is a theoretical and methodological handbook for visual communication researchers and a compilation for much of the theoretical background necessary to understand visual communication. It is required reading for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in visual communication, and it will be influential in other disciplines such as advertising, persuasion, and media studies. The volume will also be essential to media practitioners seeking to understand the visual aspects of how audiences use media to contribute to more effective use of each specific medium. (shrink)

What do "raves" have to do with eighteenth-century Romanticism, or the latest communication technologies with historical ideas about language, media, and culture? Today’s culture dazzles us with technological marvels and media spectacles. While we find them entertaining, just as often they are troubling — they seem to contradict common sense, eliciting such questions as What is real? or What is reality? and What is language? or What does language do? These questions, once confined to scholars, have become (...) everyone’s concern. Some of the best answers might be found in an unexpected source: Romanticism. Too often we bring the values of the Enlightenment, particularly that of reason, to critique phenomena not inherently rational, such as pop culture or the Internet. This means that much criticism of current culture already has an intellectual foundation antagonistic to it — inviting postmodern arguments that suggest history has ended and reality is an illusion. In contrast, Romanticism, a cultural movement founded in Germany and England during the late eighteenth century, offers us an archive of concepts surprisingly sensitive to these problems. The Romantics were poets, dreamers, and politicians who advanced ideas that anticipated much contemporary thinking. David Black has organized these ideas systematically, and has then applied them to key issues in communications, such as representation, audience, and the information society, as well as to significant debates in cultural studies. As a result, The Politics of Enchantment offers a new theory of media and culture that is grounded in intellectual history, yet as feverishly current as the latest digital device. (shrink)

본 연구는 디지털 융합미디어를 기반으로 하는 현대사회의 불통 현상과 더불어 이로 인해 야기되고 있는 인간 소외의 원인 규명을 미디어에 기초한 인간의 의사소통 행위에 관한 이론적 고찰을 통해 분석하고, 그 문제의 해결을 위한 방안의 모색을 유가의 和와 노자의 이상사회에 대한 의미 분석을 통해 시도한다. 이 점에서 동양철학의 융화적 사고와 융합미디어 시대의 사회적 소통성 연구는 우리가 지향해야할 미래 사회의 공감과 소통의 기제성을 마련하는 동시에 우리가 향유하고 있는 디지털 생활문화에 대한 새로운 이해의 틀을 마련하는 계기가 된다. 더욱이 동양의 관계적 세계관의 소통구조에 대한 의미 (...) 분석은 불통문화의 해결을 위한 방안을 모색하는 동시에 의사소통 행위의 사회적 가치를 회복하는 이론 토대가 된다. (shrink)

To restructure and systematize the concept of personalization, in this study we introduce a two-dimensional and relational typology of personalization of political representation, comprising a horizontal as well as a vertical dimension, and put it to an empirical test. We concertedly utilize content analyses of political newspaper and television coverage as well as of party press releases during the 2008 Austrian election campaign. With regard to the Austrian case, the findings outline that personalization of political representation is not a universal (...) phenomenon; it rather appears as a context- and logic-sensitive communicational phenomenon. Political public relations shows significantly higher levels of horizontal as well as vertical diversification than the media by being more individualized and less monopolized by leaders and executive elites. Additionally, political representation in the tabloid press is more personalized than in quality papers, and the communication of catch-all parties is more individualized than of niche parties. (shrink)

This paper addresses the theoretical framework on corporate social reporting. Although that corporate social reporting has been analysed from different perspectives, legitmacy theory currently is the dominating perspective. Authors employing this framework suggest that social and environmental disclosures are responses to both public pressure and increased media attention resulting from major social incidents such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the chemical leak in Bhopal (India). More specifically, those authors argue that the increase in social disclosures represent a (...) strategy to alter the public''s perception about the legitimacy of the organisation. Therefore, we suggest using corporate communication as an overarching framework to study corporate social reporting in which corporate image and corporate identity are central. (shrink)

Ethical problems connected with biological and medical discoveries in genetic engineering, neurobiology and pharmaceutical research, reach a unified and critical point of view in bioethics as a specific discipline. But even before reaching this stage, ethical problems already belong to two totalities: the semiobiosphere. and the current social form of global communication. Coherently with its philosophical orientation, bioethics must necessarily keep accountof this double contextualisation. The semiobiosphere is the object of study of global semiotics or the semiotics of life. (...) Global semiotics is of particular interest to bioethics not only because of the broad context it provides for the problems treated by bioethics, but also because it provides bioethics with an adequate contextualisation both in terms of extension, of quantity, as well as of quality. From this point of view, "contextualisation" also means critical reformulation. We are now alluding to the need of viewing bioethical problems in the light of today's socio-economic context, that is, in the context of global communication-production. These contextualisations are closely related from the viewpoint of ethics. Semiotics as global semiotics or semiotics of life must accept the responsibility of denouncing incongruencies in the global system, any threats to life over the entire planet inherent in this system. (shrink)

Extensive social media usage causes psychological dependence and impacts people’s self-evaluations. It is vital to seek possible buffers to social media addiction’s detrimental effect on self-esteem and body image. Poland has one of the highest scores on problematic social media usage. Past studies pointed to narcissism and self-compassion as possible mediators of such effects. The present study aimed to explore Polish individuals’ (N=527) social media usage habits. We hypothesised gender differences and social media addiction (...) predictive effect on self-evaluations (self- esteem, body image), with narcissism and self-compassion as mediators of such relationships. The results revealed that only visual media (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) had a negative effect on self-evaluations and that women reported more social media addiction and decreased self-esteem, self-compassion and body image. Social media addiction was negatively predicting body image for both genders and self-esteem for women but not for men, with self-compassion and narcissism mediating such relationships. (shrink)

This book is the result of the first SEEP (Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy) conference that was held in Asia. First, the Western tradition is reinterpreted and restated by the two editors with their diversified perspective of virtue ethics and communicative ethics. Then, new approaches such as "critical realism", "reciprocal delivery", "evolutionary thought" and "cultural studies" are applied to understand ethical problems in economics. Further, in contrast to the reassessment of Scottish moral philosophy and German Romanticism, Chinese, (...) Japanese, and Korean ethical thinking is examined under the modern perspective. This book does not miss the reflections on current problems around the penetration of corruption and the primacy of shareholders' value in the field of business. (shrink)

Theoretical concepts that explain transnational mass or social communication are rather unsophisticated. After twenty years of research on media ‘globalization’, academic thinking in this field is still vague and definitely requires more effort. One reason as to why theory is so unconvincing is that most researchers are experts for the ‘translocal’ but not for the ‘local’. Our language skills and methodologies are particularly limited when we try to understand if and how transnational media do or do not (...) affect non-Western societies. To get out of this methodology trap we need a better integration of media studies and the so-called area studies. Currently, media and communication studies, despite all efforts, are ‘international’ only in a very limited sense. There is a dire need for better integration of Asian, African, Latin American, North African and Middle Eastern media studies into theoretical debates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Alcibiades and Athens: A Study in Literary PresentationW. J. MccoyDavid Gribble. Alcibiades and Athens: A Study in Literary Presentation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. xii + 304 pp. Cloth, $75.In the wake of Hatzfeld's seminal study (1940), the life of Alcibiades has been examined and reexamined with a historical fine-tooth comb. Here Gribble offers, in a revised version of his Oxford D.Phil. thesis, a palette of Athenian literary portraits (...) (he opts not to deal with the later, non-Athenian tradition, 26) in an effort "to trace the extraordinary reaction excited by Alcibiades in contemporaries and in contemporary texts" (viii), with particular emphasis on the year 416-15, "when Alcibiades is at his most loved but also his most feared"--the moment "that is the focus of the most important ancient depictions" (vii), namely Thucydides 6.15, [Andocides] 4, and Plato's Symposium.In his introduction (1-28), Gribble explores the relationship between the "great" or "superlative" individual and his city and the inevitable clash of wills which typically ensued. Heroes and victors of whatever sort, however admired and honored by fellow citizens, usually posed a problem of accommodation within the Greek community. Some, such as Alcibiades, even became "city-threatening," thereby setting the stage for a love-hate scenario which played itself out not only in the day-to-day realities of late-fifth-century public life and policy but in the accompanying literary record. As defined by Gribble, the "great individual" possessed superlative natural gifts (13), "a massive sense of personal worth" (14), insatiable ambition (16-17), and "superlative status"--a combination of attributes which, if pursued aggressively, could pose "a threat to the concept of political equality which is the very basis of polis life" (18), especially when the polis in question was a democracy like Athens. And so it was with Alcibiades. [End Page 278]In chapter 1 (29-89), Gribble examines not "the story of Alcibiades' life,... but the way he lived his life (i.e., his bios)--or at least the way this lifestyle is presented in the surviving texts" (29). Such works stand apart from "ancient political-military historiography" and belong instead "to a tradition which, for the most part, is later in origin and far less reliable," one that "does not provide us with a single version of Alcibiades, but with layers of developing images, building on and transforming the picture transmitted from the late fifth and early fourth centuries" (29). Whereas distortion took root almost immediately at the hands of comic poets, orators, and Socratics, the Hellenistic writers (especially their penchant for "inventing" anecdotal detail pertaining to his private life) contaminated the story of the historical Alcibiades beyond repair. This mix of history and anecdote is preserved in Plutarch's Vita, which, according to Gribble, holds a key to understanding "the tradition of Alcibiades stories" (31, and conclusion, 263-82).Still Gribble does not harbor the illusion that he can ever find the real Alcibiades (in terms of his "actual behaviour"), for even amid the pages of contemporary authors this son of Cleinias had become a manipulable object of discourse as well as an appropriate pawn for arguments, both pro and con, which scrutinized the "relationship between the elite individual and the city" (43). It was a rare feat for any leader to keep such a relationship (marked both by distance from and solidarity with the demos) in balance; in the case of Alcibiades, there was teetering and tension from the beginning. His vainglorious and luxurious licenses doubtless aroused resentment in many circles, but more controversial was his "excessive and dangerous ambition" (59), coupled with a "contempt for normal convention displayed in (his) personal life" (70), that seemed to threaten the very stability of the state.Gribble begins his probe of contemporary texts in chapter 2 (90-158, including two appendices) with the four surviving rhetorical works (Isocrates 16, Lysias 14 and 15, and [Andocides] 4), which provide evidence of serious and ongoing debate about Alcibiades in the years following his death in 404-403. He begins part A ("Background") by discussing the "reality" of the first three speeches (all of which technically deal with the... (shrink)

The article studies two especific forms of social interaction, linguistically mediated: promises and threats. Two pregnant theoretical accounts are to be considered here. Firstly, the analysis propounded within the framework of Game Theory, assuming an intentionalist account of human agency and an instrumentalist concept of rationality; and secondly, the attempt carried out by Speech Acts theorists. In the first case, it can be shown that the theoretical premisses are insufficient to offer a proper account of such basic forms of (...) social interchange. This result gives indirect support, so it is argued, to the second theoretical framework considered. Yet some of the solutions offered seem to be also unsatisfactory. Reasons are given of why it is so, and an attempt of solution, within the same theoretical framework, is suggested. (shrink)

By using social media, corporations can communicate about their corporate social responsibility (CSR) to the public without having to pass through the gatekeeping function of the news media. However, to what extent can corporations influence the public’s evaluation of their CSR activities with social media activities and if the legacy news media still act as the primary agenda setters when it comes to corporate reputation have not yet been thoroughly analyzed in a digitized media environment. (...) This study addressed this research gap by looking at the effect of CSR communication through Facebook and news media coverage of CSR on corporate reputation in Switzerland. The results of this longitudinal study show that the salience and tone of news media coverage of CSR were positively related to corporate reputation, even though the news media coverage about CSR was predominantly negative. Thus, reputation was still strengthened even in the face of negative publicity. No effect of CSR communication through Facebook on corporate reputation was found. The results suggest that legacy news media still were influential in determining how the public evaluates corporations in the digital age. (shrink)

This article brings media ecology into conversation with Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism in an effort to lure the former beyond its normally anthropocentric orientation. The article is divided into two parts. Part 1 spells out the way Whitehead's approach can aid media ecology in developing a less anthropocentric theory of communication. Part 2 engages more specifically with Mark B. N. Hansen's Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media. Hansen's work is an example of the (...) exciting new directions opened up for media theory by Whitehead's panexperientialist ontology, but I argue that Hansen's attempt to "invert" Whitehead's theory of perception is based on a terminological confusion. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in an array of mental health problems. Previous research has shown that media exposure to stressful situations is often related to anxiety and stress. However, given that most existing work has used cross-sectional designs, less is known about the interplay of media exposure and worry as they unfold during sustained exposure to a collective stressor. The current study examined bidirectional associations between COVID-related worry and media consumption over a three-month (...) period. Participants were 87 community adults, the majority of whom were recruited from communities heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. For three consecutive months, participants asked to indicate how much time they spent worrying and consuming news about the COVID-19 pandemic on a scale from 1 to 5. Cross-lagged analyses revealed that Pandemic Worry at Month 1 predicted increases in Pandemic Media Consumption at Month 2, which in turn predicted increases in Pandemic Worry at Month 3. Findings suggest that media consumption may be a maladaptive coping strategy that has the iatrogenic effect of increasing worry. Clarifying the causal associations between anxiety-perpetuating processes and media consumption may have important clinical implications for understanding and treating mental health during health pandemics. (shrink)

As technology redefines relationships, new assumptions are emerging about the ethics of persuasion. In an increasingly global economy, technology is forcing greater transparency onto businesses and governments as the moral context of their communications is inseparable from the competitive nature of the business world. This article suggests that moral boundaries will be set naturally, that consumers have a moral obligation to excercise "due diligence" in their acceptance of messages, and that no one is in charge of the global economy's conventions (...) and morality. The system ultimately depends on participants to keep their own self-interested boat in the race. (shrink)

This book argues that ethical business behavior can be enhanced by taking fuller account of human nature, particularly with respect to the need for creating relatively small communities within the corporation. Timothy Fort discusses this premise in relation to the three predominant theories of business ethics--stakeholder, virtue, and contract. Drawing heavily from philosophy, he analyzes traditional business ethics and legal theory. Overall, his work provides a good example of how to integrate normative and empirical studies in business ethics, a (...) task that often receives substantial discussion in academic journals. (shrink)