Social Theory and Communication Technology

Terje Rasmussen

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138742987
• eBook ISBN: 9781351723572
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This title was first published in 2001. An investigation of new forms of interaction and communication. The essays address theoretical contributions and insights which may assist us in the understanding of modern society inhabited by a wide range of new media.In order to answer questions on this subject, the text suggests a "structural hermeneutic" - a view on the public as agents embedded in their lifeworlds (rather than as consumers and receivers), who play a large part in reproducing structural and distanciated processes of meaning. The essays explore the implications of such daily practices as making a telephone call or sending an email, receiving money from a bank machine using a credit card, or retrieving information from a Web site. Each of these practices reproduce patterns of information and communication practices, which reshape communication processes in society. The essays examine the relationship between media change and social change, with particular emphasis on their contribution to social interaction in everyday life and in the reproduction of social systems.

1 Introduction: New Media Theory

Once, the electro-magnetic telegraph was the first and only technology to transfer, store and retrieve words in extended space. Today, the telegraph is a dying technology. It dies, however, in a world saturated by digital tele-graphy. It turned out that the telegraph was only a token of what the philosopher J.F. Lyotard calls a telegraphable culture. Over the last two decades in particular, the marriage of telecommunications and computers into digital communication technologies such as the Internet has achieved growing impact on day-to-day practices as well as on society as a hole. Communication technologies are among the most typical products of post-war industrialism, both because of their astonishing ability to process information and communication, and for their reach beyond economic production. They shape and change relationships of everyday life and social institutions, from which they also receive their social meanings. As everyday practices are gradually geared into these new channels of articulation, new forms of interaction emerge and others transform. It is my intention to investigate these new forms, this telegraphable culture. This collection of essays addresses theoretical contributions and insights which may assist us in the understanding of modern society inhabited by a wide range of new media.

Until the mid 1980s, telecommunications were largely ignored as an object in sociology and media research. Social and cultural problems of telecommunications were largely left unaddressed. Apparently, the problems of telecommunications seemed to be merely technical, economic and (increasingly) policy-oriented. Several reasons may account for this. First the field of media research was structured around theories and models dedicated to the particular structural features of one-way mass media and mass communication. The social and cultural impacts of telecommunications were impossible to grasp with models that assumed mass audiences and mass distributed messages. There was an implicit tendency to view telecommunications as devoid of any cultural or political meaning, ‘content-less’ as they were. The structure of the media made it irrelevant to distinguish between powerful senders and dominated receivers of messages. No legislation was oriented towards the content of telecommunications – the principle of ‘universal service obligation’ differed from ‘public service’ in that it referred only to geographic and social distribution. The sociological theme of ideology as power rendered irrelevant. Neither media studies nor cultural studies could find any cultural content to analyse. In the distinction between interpersonal communication and mass communication, the telephone and other communication technologies simply disappeared.

Second, the most widely distributed and used telecommunications medium, the telephone, appeared ‘invisible’ in everyday life. The discrete and mundane success of the telephone may also explain some of the lack of concern in both sociology and media research for telecommunications. One particular reason for this lack of interest may be that the telephone has had a feminine image, deriving from its explicitly domestic context. The telephone enhanced the widening gaps between private and public spheres of industrial society, and simultaneously provided means for female interaction. As a domestic medium, it was naturalised as a ‘feminine’ medium, available for homeworking women with the expressive and integrating duties of the family in relation to relatives, other family members, friends, etc.

Over the last two decades, however, many of the distinctions between mass media and telecommunications have gradually blurred. Convergence takes place at several levels. This is due to technical, economic and social changes in both kinds of media:

First, digital telecommunications adopt prestructured ‘content’ with narrative meaning, such as on web-sites. Emerging trends indicate that telecommunications extend their area from the strictly personal and interpersonal to the ‘mass’ level. This results in three kinds of changes: in use patterns, technology and policy. The telephone and the fax are used for distribution of standardised messages, as in marketing and fund-raising. ‘Junk-calls’ and ‘junk-fax’ and ‘junk-E-mail’ clearly approaches the principle of mass communication. In professional life, the trend to substitute answering machines for ‘live’ human voices is evident. Voice mail, voice processing devices and message services make it harder to reach a human being on the telephone. Instead, a standardised, preproduced message is presented. A similar trend can be seen in the increasing use of Video-on-demand, World Wide Web and other databases and services as public information devices.

While the traditional culture industry is not involved to the same extent in telecommunications, the software, computer games and marketing industry expands more than most all other industries. It seems that the information technology industry headed by Microsoft Inc. develops a ‘culture industry’ of its own. The telecommunications and cable industry co-operates with content providers like the movie industry, because of the possibilities to transmit live images in the ordinary telecommunications networks. The increasing affiliation to software and television means that communication technologies acquire a cultural ‘content’.

Second, and related is the trend of telephone conferences (Telemarkets, chat-lines, etc.), video conferences, and computer conferencing to depersonalise telecommunication (Dutton, 1992: 386). More indirectly, electronic surveillance in public spaces and databases containing personal data also suggest that telecommunications to a greater extent have collective significance in that they involve the “mass”. Telecommunications prove to enhance group or mass meaning because they increasingly operate in conjunction with mass media. In distance learning for instance, electronic media is normally combined with printed media.

Third, as telecommunications become deregulated, they find themselves facing considerable political and ethical criticism: As they become subject for private initiatives and take-overs (due to deregulation), they also become noticeable as subject for political conflict, leading to various problematic dilemmas (Erman and Guiterrez, 1990). For instance, freedom of expression hitherto related to the mass media, relates increasingly to Callers-ID, censorship on the Internet and chat-lines (’dial-a-porn'), surveillance (Wilson, 1988; Lyon, 1994) etc. To an increasing extent, they take part in the transformation of temporal and spatial conditions for social practices leading to dilemmas of freedom and responsibility. Also, just as the ethos of ‘public service’ has long been at stake in broadcasting, the concept of ‘universal service’ becomes more visible precisely because it is under heavy pressure.

Fourth, services based upon telecommunications increasingly join the matrix of media in domestic life. As the telephone becomes mobile and receives new functions, computers, answering machines and faxes find their way into the domestic market, they share a social context of use with the mass media (Silverstone, 1991; 1994; Silverstone et. al, 1992). The Internet and telecommunications become everyday media for similar practices, such as entertainment and news. This illustrates the growing flexibility in both communication and media technologies, suggesting general media environments, transforming individual lifeworlds produced by an intertextual web of information and communication. As the new media subsequently lead to a great information industry, new services are introduced to the home market (video-on-demand, Internet, Web-TV, etc.). The introduction of digital end-to-end networks (DSL, ISDN) allows various functions of distribution, retrieving and processing of information to be performed in everyday use. Political deregulation of the telecommunications sector ensures rapid innovation processes which extract combinations of all technical advancements. In short, what happened in the exploding home electronic market, now takes place in the broader field of telecommunications.

With the expanding and sophisticated diffusion of new information and communication technologies, old questions reoccur. In what ways do they change the conditions for human action in an everyday world saturated of communication technologies? How will the new media restrict and expand the range of human action? From where do we receive the motivations and regulating norms that guide our use of the new media? Will moral convictions change as technology enables distance between social agents and communication across distance? Where is the autonomy and the power to be located in new technology? To what extent does the technology decide – by the very nature of its design – human conduct? To what extent does new media allow for degrees of freedom, flexibility and openness? How can the possibilities of flexibility be fully exploited by the user? How do communication-technologies enable or constrain cultural change by its influence on representation and dialogue? What are the consequences for social integration in general?

In order to address such questions, this collection of essays suggests a ‘structural hermeneutic’ – A view on the public as agents embedded in their lifeworlds (rather than as consumers and receivers), who play a large part in reproducing structural and distanciated processes of meaning. Communication technologies turn the audience into agents! That is why we should turn to sociology and social theory.

The diffusion and translation of new electronic media into everyday life outside the realm of labour, as well as its close affinity to language, suggests that new technologies must be understood in ways closer to sociality itself. Due to their language-based qualities and for the fact that they are about to reach most corners of daily life, new information and communication technologies will in coming years become deeply embedded with forms of domestic and cultural meanings. No longer do they belong to the ‘sub-stratum’ which merely effect cultural processes. As with television, they are themselves cultural products.

The field of inquiry here then, is the interrelationships of social and technological changes. The essays explore the implications of such daily practices as making a phone call or E-mail to a friend or sending a fax-message, receiving money from a bank-machine using a credit card, retrieving infôrmation from a web-site somewhere. Each of these practices reproduce patterns of information and communication practices, which reshape communication processes in society. The essays examine the relationship between media change and social change, with particular emphasis on their contribution to social interaction in everyday life and in the reproduction of social systems.

My approach is to confront the current penetration of communication technologies in advanced societies, with insights in sociology and social theory. Substantially, I confront the ways various communication technologies play a part in everyday, social change. Theoretically, I confront communication technologies with social theory from the nineteen eighties and nineties, as a means of understanding the social construction of communication technologies and communication processes. By this, I hope to offer insights for what exists of a sociology of the new media. Moreover, I wish to indicate in what ways general sociology and social theory relate to the new challenges which new media poses to advanced societies.

Less than ever before technologies are uniform or isolated in their social effects. I wish, therefore, to counter ideas that tools are dead, or logically and empirically separate from human agency and social organisation, just as I reject ideas that total technique has taken over the social. In general, I suggest that we should focus upon the impact of technology, but as much on the social construction of technology in daily life, because it may suggests alternative routes of social development. At this level, there exists an interplay between origins and consequences. Technologies are both social constructs, and artefacts with particular powers. Communication technology has structural impact on subsequent social, political and cultural processes, as well as on our everyday life. Communication technologies are in fact action-originating structures; they are not only connected to, but also embedded in agency, communication and personal responsibility.

My perspective is hermeneutic in that the conceptual framework take everyday experiences as a point of departure. And yet I also aim to confront the limitations of hermeneutics in considering advanced technological systems, and approach what can be called ‘structural hermeneutics’. My approach is to develop some ideal-typical features of communication technologies, and to confront these with more general social theory of modern experience, so as to investigate in what ways communication technologies are situated in relation to general modern transformations. I shall do this more or less explicitly in developing concepts and understandings originating from general social theory, and through discussions of distinct social theories. Besides presenting a more coherent understanding of communication technologies in processes of social change and order, I would like to indicate how this approach might guide empirical research. When I refer to ‘new media’ and ‘communication technologies’, I refer broadly to multi-media, hypermedia, hypertext, interactive media, all based on digital networks and telecommunications. Together with mass media, they make up the category ‘media technologies’. Let me briefly indicate the themes of each of the following essays.

The first essay explores central aspects of the sociology of Anthony Giddens. My argument is ‘quasi-ontological’, in that it attempts to describe aspects of a modern social life that is increasingly saturated by media technologies. The question is how mediated interaction and situations may be interpreted and organised by the agents in their daily, technologised life. Giddens contends that the fundamental question of social theory, the ‘problem of order’ “…is to explicate how the limitations of individual ‘presence’ are transcended by the ‘stretching’ of social relations across time and space” (Giddens, 1984:35). This cannot be achieved, I believe, without considering the ‘mechanisms of distanciation and disembedding’ – the new advanced machinery for time and space manipulation – which communication technologies truly are. To some extent, I follow Giddens’ approach in developing a conceptual framework for everyday recurrent episodes. There are however also central aspects that needs modification, when directed towards the new media.

On the other hand, I argue in the next essay, such analysis cannot dissociate itself from the role of technology in the transformation of modernity and the conflicts and social problems that emanate from general modern change. It is equally important to demonstrate the significance of communication technologies in the changing relationships between the individual and society at large, between private and public spheres, and for social integration. At this point the ontological perspective needs to be extended with a broader critical perspective which focuses on system transformations and their possible effects. In the second essay, I address the critical theory of Jürgen Habermas to suggest how this can be done. A quasi-ontological description of the human-technology relationship, needs to be accompanied by normative considerations concerning the significance of technology for transformations of modernity.

Within the boundaries of social theory and sociology, my intention is to develop a critical understanding of how media technologies carry reproduction of meaning and information. They attempt to bring theoretically together the interconnection of the social and the technological on micro and macro levels. Communication technologies are increasingly located strategically in the terrain vague between action and language, between the material and the symbolic, between the private and public spheres, and historically, perhaps even between industrial capitalism and its transcendence. In the subsequent essays, I address these terrains in relation to agency, contexts of interaction and large-scale social systems, and modern social integration, on the basis of structuration theory and critical theory.

In the third essay, I address technology-mediated practices in daily life, which designate individual or collective practices in extended time and space by means of communication technology. Day-to-day use is reproduced by habitus which designates a socially constructed principle of regulated improvisation. It becomes influenced by various media technologies and calls on the individual to act and consume in certain ways. Everyday life expresses itself, with varying degree of consistency, through the media and media use that it incorporates. On the other hand, when technology-mediated actions turn into everyday mundane processes, they receive structural qualities which are not inherent in it from the innovation process in laboratories.

With new communication technologies adding to the prevailing mass media matrix, the magnitude, span and form of distribution of information and communication expand dramatically. Today, everyday life is deeply intertwined with the development of the electronic media of television and telecommunications. It is clear that new technology influences the quality of time and space dimensions illustrated by the introduction of notions like ‘globalisation’, ‘virtual space’, ‘cyberspace’, ‘real-time’ and ‘asynchronous communication’ etc. The fourth essay discusses the new contextualisation of social interaction in everyday life as a consequence of the ability of new media to put human action into new spatial dimensions.

Interaction across proximity and distance is an inherent quality of modern life. Money, means of transportation, mass media and new communication media are all means of lifting social action out of specific locales and connecting existence to larger systems. Familiarity is associated less with locality as the mass mediated messages are spread globally. They remove social relations from immediate contexts, and extend action in time and space. Consequently, traditional authority has lost much of its power over individual practices. Social action has become gradually unchained from traditional bonds of rationality. On the societal scale, this has resulted in what is named in sociological literature as diversification, differentiation and functional specialisation. In the fifth essay, I address the ‘lifting out’ of social interaction from particular places and the consequences for modern everyday life. The new media and telecommunications participate in the rationalisation of society: displacement of space from place by means of new information technology is a typical feature of modern daily life. Social life cuts through spatial and temporal limits. The gap between presence and absence is relativised and provides a dynamic which has led to global, bureaucratic systems.

A no less important sociological theme is the significance of the new media for social integration. This I discuss in the concluding essay. The ‘Hobbesian’ problem of order may, in a world of global relations, be reformulated as a question of in what way social integration takes place through electronic systems in time and space. The question is how communication technologies compensate for vast geographical mobility, fragile boundaries and perhaps for an increasingly segmented and fragmented community. How is order and individual autonomy possible in a technology-textured society? How, in fact, does everyday life become situated in time and space? These questions relate to the reorganisation of society and the steering of practices as a macro phenomenon through new communications technologies as systems of mediated integration. To specify social contexts of mediated integration becomes increasingly complicated due to the various levels of analysis and of the varying dimensions of time and space involved. In the relation between communication technologies and social integration, I address questions such as: What is the relationship between distinct technologies and distinct forms of integration? In what ways does technological change imply a subsequent change of integration? I suggest that these questions should be confronted through a coherent theory outlined above in combination with empirical investigations of particular technologies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: New Media Theory
• 2 Structuration Theory and the New Media – Insights and Problems
• 3 Habermas’ Critical Theory of Modernity – Insights and Problems
• 4 Social Action in a Digital World
• 5 New Media and the Contexts of Daily Life
• 6 The New Risks: Digital Disembedding and Reembedding
• 7 New Media and the Social Integration of Society
• Bibliography