Critical mediation: tracking the social imaginary
Reginald A. Clifford
2134/35473
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/thesis/Critical_mediation_tracking_the_social_imaginary/9480737
Since the pioneering work of Harold Innes and Marshal McLuhan,
accounts of social and cultural change that assign a key role to
innovations in media have enjoyed considerable currency. These
Medium Theories, as Joshua Meyrowitz has usefully dubbed them, are
particularly concerned with how the shift from oral to literate to
electronic media has successively reconfigured both cultural systems
and their everyday deployment. This model of mediation suffers from
major weaknesses however. It is media-centric, crudely deterministic,
ethnocentric, and takes no account of patterns of social inequality.
Hence, while this thesis retains Medium Theory's core concern with the
impact of different modes of mediation, it draws on work in Critical
Sociology and communications studies to address these deficiencies and
develop an alternative model of Critical Mediation. Using contemporary
Mexico City as a case study, the potential of this approach is pursued
through a detailed study of the ways in which different forms of
mediation shape the organisation and uses of the communal symbolic
spaces that make up the Social Imaginary. [Continues.]
2018-10-25 11:26:55
untagged
Language, Communication and Culture not elsewhere classified
Studies in Human Society not elsewhere classified