There has been increasing attention in sociology and internet studies to the topic of ‘digital remains’: the artefacts users of social network services (SNS) and other online services leave behind when they die. But these artefacts also pose philosophical questions regarding what impact, if any, these artefacts have on the ontological and ethical status of the dead. One increasingly pertinent question concerns whether these artefacts should be preserved, and whether deletion counts as a harm to the deceased user and therefore (...) provides pro tanto reasons against deletion. In this paper, I build on previous work invoking a distinction between persons and selves to argue that SNS offer a particularly significant material instantiation of persons. The experiential transparency of the SNS medium allows for genuine co-presence of SNS users, and also assists in allowing persons (but not selves) to persist as ethical patients in our lifeworld after biological death. Using Blustein’s “rescue from insignificance” argument for duties of remembrance, I argue that this persistence function supplies a nontrivial (if defeasible) obligation not to delete these artefacts. Drawing on Luciano Floridi’s account of “constitutive” information, I further argue that the “digital remains” metaphor is surprisingly apt: these artefacts in fact enjoy a claim to moral regard akin to that of corpses. (shrink)

How do social actors get addressees to stop retreating to metadiscussions that derail ground-level discussions, and why do they expect the strategies to work? The question is of both theoretical and practical interest, especially with regard to ground-level discussions of systemic sexism and racism derailed by qualifying “not all men” and “not all white people” perform the sexist or racist actions that are the topic of discussion. I use a normative pragmatic approach to analyze two exemplary messages designed to halt (...) retreats to metadiscussions about using “not all men” and “not all white people” qualifiers in discussions of systemic sexism and racism. I find that social actors use strategies that may at first glance appear to be out of bounds in an ideal critical discussion—e.g., demanding, shouting, cussing, sarcasm, name-calling—to cultivate a context where using not-all qualifiers becomes increasingly costly. The strategies are designed to get addressees to recognize that using not-all qualifiers is not an epistemic correction of a hasty generalization or ethical intervention to halt promulgation of stereotypes about men and white people. Instead, the strategies display that using not-all qualifiers is a fallible sign of willful hermeneutical ignorance, willful ignorance, and an attempt to reassert a measure of social dominance. These findings affirm the need to investigate the various strategies and normative materials social actors actually bring to bear to regulate disagreement. (shrink)

This article conducts a mixed-method content analysis of Chinese and American news media coverage of Google DeepMind’s Go playing computer program, AlphaGo. Drawing on humanistic approaches to artificial intelligence, combined with an empirically rigorous content analysis, it examines the differences and overlap in coverage by the Chinese and American press in their accounts of AlphaGo, and its historic match with Korea’s Lee Sedol in March, 2016. The event was not only followed intensely in China, but also made the front page (...) of The New York Times. This article finds that the Chinese press was more likely than the American press to frame AlphaGo as non-threatening, which the authors attribute to cultural differences and the two countries' different understandings of Go. In addition to quantitatively identifying similarities and differences in the framing of AlphaGo, this paper also investigates the underlying and evolving contestations over what constitutes the “human” and the “machine.” It concludes by discussing the implications of the study’s findings as well as outlining avenues for further research. (shrink)

The task of this article is to outline foundations of a Marxist-humanist approach to communication justice, media justice, and digital justice. A dialectical approach to justice is outlined that di...

Transparency’s importance as an administrative norm seems self-evident. Prevailing ideals of political theory stipulate that the more visible government is, the more democratic, accountable, and legitimate it appears. The disclosure of state information consistently disappoints, however: there is never enough of it, while it often seems not to produce a truer democracy, a more accountable state, better policies, and a more contented populace. This gap between theory and practice suggests that the theoretical assumptions that provide the basis for transparency are (...) wrong. This article argues that transparency is best understood as a theory of communication that excessively simplifies and thus is blind to the complexities of the contemporary state, government information, and the public. Taking them fully into account, the article argues, should lead us to question the state’s ability to control information, which in turn should make us question not only the improbability of the state making itself visible, but also the improbability of the state keeping itself secret. (shrink)

Electronic text can be defined on two different, though interconnected, levels. On the one hand, electronic text can be defined by taking the notion of “text” or “printed text” as the point of departure. On the other hand, electronic text can be defined by taking the digital format as the point of departure, where everything is represented in the binary alphabet. While the notion of text in most cases lends itself to being independent of medium and embodiment, it is also (...) often tacitly assumed that it is in fact modeled on the print medium, instead of, for instance, on hand-written text or speech. In late 20th century, the notion of “text” was subjected to increasing criticism, as can be seen in the question that has been raised in literary text theory about whether “there is a text in this class.” At the same time, the notion was expanded by including extralinguistic sign modalities (images, videos). A basic question, therefore, is whether electronic text should be included in the enlarged notion that text is a new digital sign modality added to the repertoire of modalities or whether it should be included as a sign modality that is both an independent modality and a container that can hold other modalities. In the first case, the notion of electronic text would be paradigmatically formed around the e-book, which was conceived as a digital copy of a printed book but is now a deliberately closed work. Even closed works in digital form will need some sort of interface and hypertextual navigation that together constitute a particular kind of paratext needed for accessing any sort of digital material. In the second case, the electronic text is defined by the representation of content and (some parts of the) processing rules as binary sequences manifested in the binary alphabet. This wider notion would include, for instance, all sorts of scanning results, whether of the outer cosmos or the interior of our bodies and of digital traces of other processes in-between (machine readings included). Since other alphabets, such as the genetic alphabet and all sorts of images may also be represented in the binary alphabet, such materials will also belong to the textual universe within this definition. A more intriguing implication is that born-digital materials may also include scripts and interactive features as intrinsic parts of the text. The two notions define the text on different levels: one is centered on the Latin, the other on the binary alphabet, and both definitions include hypertext, interactivity, and multimodality as constituent parameters. In the first case, hypertext is included as a navigational, paratextual device; whereas in the second case, hypertext is also incorporated in the narrative within an otherwise closed work or as a constituent element on the textual universe of the web, where it serves the ongoing production of (possibly scripted) connections and disconnections between blocks of textual content. Since the early decades of early 21st century still represent only the very early stages of the globally distributed universe of web texts, this is also a history of the gradual unfolding of the dimensions of these three constituencies—hypertext, interactivity, and multimodality. The result is a still-expanding repertoire of genres, including some that are emerging via path dependency; some via remediation; and some as new genres that are unique for networked digital media, including “social media texts” and a growing variety of narrative and discursive multiple-source systems. (shrink)

Advocates of dialogic communication have promoted two-way symmetrical communication as the most effective and ethical model for public relations. This article uses John Durham Peters's critique of dialogic communication to reconsider this infatuation with dialogue. In this article, we argue that dialogue's potential for selectivity and tyranny poses moral problems for public relations. Dialogue's emphasis on reciprocal communication also saddles public relations with ethically questionable quid pro quo relationships. We contend that dissemination can be more just than dialogue because it (...) demands more integrity of the source and recognizes the freedom and individuality of the source. The type of communication, such as dialogue or dissemination, is less important than the mutual discovery of truth. Reconciliation, a new model of public relations, is proposed as an alternative to pure dialogue. Reconciliation recognizes and values individuality and differences, and integrity is no longer sacrificed at the altar of agreement. (shrink)

In educational discourse dialogue tends to be viewed as being (morally) superior to monologue. When we look at them as basic forms of communication, we find that dialogue is a two-way, one-to-one form and monologue is a one-way, one-to-many form. In this paper I revisit the alleged (moral) superiority of dialogue. First, I problematize certain normative features of dialogue, most notably reciprocity. Here I use Socrates as my example (the Phaedrus). Second, I discuss monologue, using Jesus as my example (St. (...) Luke's gospel). I argue that there are values in the monological form that tend to be overlooked and unrecognized, for example the freedom of the audience not to respond. (shrink)

It is a common wisdom that linguistic communication is different from linguistic understanding. However, the distinction between communication and understanding is not as clear as it seems to be. It is argued that the relationship between linguistic communication and understanding depends upon the notions of understanding and communication involved. Thinking along the line of propositional understanding and informative communication, communication can be reduced to mutual understanding. In contrast, operating along the line of hermeneutic understanding and dialogical communication, the process of (...) understanding is in essence a process of communication. However, dialogical communication should not be confused with propositional understanding. Conversely, hermeneutic understanding should not be confused with informative communication either. The former is dialogical in nature while the latter is monological. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to clarify what the concept of digital media might add to the understanding of mediatization and what the concept of mediatization might add to the understanding of digital media. It is argued that digital media open an array of new trajectories in human communication, which were not anticipated in previous conceptualizations of media and mediatization. If digital media are to be included, the concept of mediatization has to be revised and new parameters must be (...) integrated in the concept of media. At the same time, it is argued that the concept of mediatization still provides a variety of perspectives of relevance to the study of digital media. The claim that the concept of mediatization has to be reinterpreted can only be legitimized if digital media are considered distinct from the media formerly referred to in mediatization theory. Such characteristics are presented and digital media are defined in section 2, while section 1 is devoted to theories of mediatization and the notion of media. Section 3 analyses the relation between mediatization and digitization. Finally, in section 4, medium theory is revisited with a view to harvest some missing fruits in contemporary mediatization theory. (shrink)

We examine dialectical tensions between “dialogue” and “narrative” as these discourses supplant one another as the fundamental discourse of intelligibility, through juxtaposing two interpretations of Genesis 38 rooted in changing interpretative paradigms. Is dialogue properly understood as a narrative genre, or is narrative the content about which people are in dialogue? Is the divine–human relationship a narrative drama or is it a dialogue between a god and human beings? We work within parameters laid out by the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer (...) (primarily representing dialogue) and Ricoeur (primarily representing narrative). On the one hand, a feminist approach can develop Tamar as a courageous hero in impossible circumstances, strategizing to overturn Judah’s patriarchal naïveté. On the other hand, Judah seems to be able to be read as a tragic hero, seeking to save Tamar. These readings challenge one another, where either Tamar’s or Judah’s autonomy is undermined. By putting these interpretations into dialogue, our aim is to show that neither dialogue nor narrative succeeds the other with finality, and that we can achieve a fragile integration of the two (dialogue and narrative) despite their propensity toward polarization. (shrink)

But my real cat is not Alice’s little cat … because I am certainly not about to conclude hurriedly, upon waking, as Alice did, that one cannot speak with a cat on the pretext that it doesn’t reply or that it always replies the same thing. Everything that I am about to entrust to you no doubt comes back to asking you to respond to me, you, to me, reply to me concerning what it is to respond. If you can. (...) The said question of the said animal in its entirety comes down to knowing not whether the animal speaks but whether one can know what respond means. And how to distinguish the response from a reaction.A response that does not respond to a question is a response that is not the solution to a problem or the .. (shrink)

Volume 34, Issue 3, July-September 2019, Page 171-175.

I am called herewith a collaborator-in-chief, mountain climber, and prophet. They all arise from the writers' largesse, not facts on the ground. But I will embrace them momentarily and then turn to...

When Giambattista Vico wrote and rewrote the Scienza Nuova between 1725 and 1744, he all but completely occluded his own discipline – rhetoric. Professor of Latin Eloquence at the University of Nap...

The promise of virtual reality is that it may eventually lead us to a "third state of consciousness" transcending the objective reality of our embodied beings and opening up to us a world of expanded realization. However, the recurring themes of our hero myths, both religious and secular, remind us of the importance of remaining grounded in the real world of embodied people and phenomenal perception. Advances in neuroscience even suggest that unconscious processing of perceptual stimuli may guide our behaviors. (...) Thus, the journey from the phenomenal to the noumenal is a round-trip ticket. We take with us the strength of our moral convictions to serve us on our journey and bring back the spiritual expansion that always comes of travel. (shrink)

This article examines how the twentieth-century composer dealt with the paradox of communicating with the composer's own self and with other musicians, but not with the public at large.

The scale and severity of the alterations to global ecologies should not simply be noted or acknowledged by communication scholars but rather should drive communication ethicists to carefully examine the values and communication practices that have enabled and promoted this kind of unchecked growth. At minimum, I argue, we ought to carefully examine this social trajectory to determine whether more growth at the current rate of speed should continue to be a goal of modern society and at what costs. Specifically, (...) as scholars of moral communication we should feel concerned with whether a moral transgression is associated with this type of rapid growth. (shrink)

Authenticity as an ideal is construed in general as an expression of existentialist unhappiness with the perceived dehumanization of man in modern society. Existential journalism can be seen as rejection of the demands of conformism and compromise of personal convictions that many journalists face. Ethically, existential journalism calls on journalists to live authentic lives, as private individuals as well as in their profession. This means to resist external pressures and to choose to follow a path that can be defended by (...) the individual journalist's inner conscience. Existential journalism, in general, has been more debated in the field of mass media ethics than authenticity. Authenticity is, however, a contested concept, and this essay applies a critical discussion about authenticity as an ethical guide to the field of journalism. Weaknesses in the idea of existential authenticity problematize the existential construal of authenticity as a route to heightened ethical awareness for contemporary journalists. (shrink)

Silence and madness can be likened to irritating cousins. Both introduce questionable or negative elements to the ideals of dialogue and rational communication. Silence can disturb and disrupt the rational pursuit of truth, while madness can noisily provoke a mockery of any meaningful or reciprocal exchange of ideas and thoughts. In the work and life of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, silence and madness highlight more positive features.To study and articulate these features, this paper relies on the central themes of two prominent (...) thinkers, the archaeological and genealogical studies from the late Michel Foucault and the revived forces of phenomenology from American philosopher Alphonso Lingis, to present the case that Nietzsche embraced a late 19th century disorder called the fugue. This disorder, what Ian Hacking calls a transient mental illness, involves nomadic life. Nietzsche exemplified such a life. His writings and experiences comprise a mixture of travels, arts of the self, willful forgetfulness, and a philosophical play with madness. From conventional perspectives, this play is viewed as irrelevant or detrimental to Nietzsche's philosophical importance. From Nietzsche's own perspective, however, this play might be appreciated as a gift from the insights of madness and the enriching contacts with silence. (shrink)

The mobile phone has become part of our everyday lives with astonishing speed. Over four billion people now have access to mobile phones, and this number keeps increasing. Mobile media technologies shape how we communicate with each other, and relate to the world. This raises questions about their influence on identity. Medium-specific properties and user-practices challenge the idea that we understand ourselves through stories. It is proposed that the notion of play sheds new light on how technologies shape identities. The (...) mobile phone mediates identities on four play levels: we play on the mobile, with the mobile, through the mobile, and at the same time we are played by the mobile. Mobile media bring new freedom of movement. Yet at the same time they constrict us. In this dialectic we become moving circles. (shrink)

It was not until the emergence, in the 19th century, of new technical devices – such as the telegraph and the phonograph – that the term medius came to serve as a collective noun (media) for advanced communication technologies. Although mediation is extensively theorized in philosophy and sociology, and is approached by medium theory and media studies, the concept remains undertheorized in the field of communication theory.By exploring the problem of mediation and by challenging its representationalist and transmissive accounts, this (...) paper posits mediation beyond the medium. It traces mediation as a relational principle which can be best understood as modulation involving inherent translation, inflection and movement. Mediation is not a simple transportation of meaning through a passive intermediary. It is not just something which stands or comes between things otherwise separated or opposed. Mediation is neither a middle-thing linking separate entities, nor do things get mediated: They are already forms of mediation. Mediation is, foremost, a connecting mean that generates modified experiences and relations, a modulating process that re-connects at the moment it separates. (shrink)

Historians and philosophers of science have examined the relationship between language and practice for a long time. Scholars have made important contributions to the field by attending to the social, cultural and economic contexts in which scientific paradigms are created and re-created. However, this article posits that while it is true that scientific practice and the artifacts they generate are both socially and discursively constructed and therefore, inextricable from the human contexts that produce them, these artifacts are not only texts (...) to be deciphered, but material things. This essay shows that the recalcitrant material dimension of my case study, a robotic moth, shapes the results of an experiment into the laws of aerodynamics in ways incommensurate with exclusively textual and/or rhetorical critiques. (shrink)

Public relations practitioners place a premium on loyalty - particularly in terms of cultivating relationships. However, little scholarly research has been done on the subject. This essay analyzes loyalty in terms of organizational deterioration and decline. The ethical dimensions of Hirschman's concept of "exit, voice, and loyalty, " and Royce's notion about loyalty, are explored, as is the concept of "loyalty to loyalty. " The essay concludes with a 7-step model intended to help practitioners determine the demands of ethical loyalty.

The human history relates to the history of communication, which has also been a co-driver of human development. Communication integrates the knowledge, organization and power of a society.Today, there is an increasing debate over the importance of politicians' mutual communication, communication with voters and the media, the role of public relations in politics, and communication with the civil society. Thus, political communication and the creative use of the media remain the essential component of any individual involved in politics or even (...) of a political group.In this study, political communication in North Macedonia is presented in the context of political efforts into the integration process in European Union (EU), by observing all the stages within the process so far. From the content and the issues addressed, it is clear that policymakers face the challenges of communication (as is the case in many countries aspiring the European integration).In this paper, the premises of genuinely political communication strategy are analyzed separately, assessing them in the context of the political communication theory. It will be shown that successful communication is an important tool for convincing citizens that EU provides a better quality of life and work. (shrink)

Plato’s Phaedrus, perhaps his most enigmatic and structurally convoluted dialogue, could easily be said to inaugurate a pointed critique of mass media that persists to the present day. Indeed, in certain corners of media theory, the origin myth of writing furnished in the Phaedrus (in which the Egyptian god Theuth presents writing as a gift to King Thamus) has in turn come to serve as a kind of origin myth for media theory: a primaeval pharmacopoeia of media effects. And yet, (...) this is an origin myth that can only underwrite not only its own non-originarity and non-truth, insofar as its very status as a written text ensures that it will never meet the criteria that it itself establishes for a reasoned account of things (logos). It remains perpetually orphaned, unable to defend itself, irrevocably cut off from its ‘father’, the speaking subject, and thus from the vitality of living discourse. But this paradox, I argue, is not a failing of the dialogue, but is a device intended to encourage the reader’s active involvement in the text’s status as medium. The Phaedrus is not just diagnostic, but therapeutic. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss a framework for the analysis of media discourse – the ‘analytics of mediation’ – that takes into account the embeddedness of media texts both in technological artefacts and in social relationships and, hence, seeks to integrate the multi-modal with the critical analysis of discourse. On the methodological level, the analytics of mediation applies a multi-modal discourse analysis onto media texts in order to study their visual and linguistic properties: camera/visual; graphic/pictorial or aural/linguistic. On the social (...) theory level, the analytics of mediation addresses critical concerns on the ethical and political role of television and other media in our ‘global village’. Can television foster a cosmopolitan consciousness or does its ‘fake proximity’ alienate the spectator from the rest of the world? Can we talk about the media as agents of global citizenship or do the media lead to compassion fatigue – a Western denial of humanitarian problems? I illustrate such questions by drawing on one concrete example of television news. (shrink)

1826 is the date attributed to the very first known photograph, Nicephore Niepce's "View from the Window at Gras." For traditional historians of photography this date marks the moment when the genius of man was finally able to merge the knowledge of chemistry with that of optics to create the most amazing technology of visual representation. However, those same historians recognize that the two essential components of photography---the camera and the properties of silver halides---had been known for centuries before the (...) first photograph was ever taken. (shrink)

Online discourse has created a new media environment for contributions to public life, one that challenges the social significance of the role of public intellectuals—intellectuals who, whether by choice or by circumstance, offer commentary on issues of the day. The value of such commentary is rooted in the assumption that, by virtue of their training and experience, intellectuals possess knowledge—that they understand what constitutes knowledge with respect to a particular topic, are able to distinguish it from mere opinion, and are (...) in a position to define its relevance in different contexts. When intellectuals comment on matters of public concern, they are accordingly presumed to speak truth, whether they are writing books or op-ed columns or appearing as guests on radio and television news programs. At the same time, with increasing frequency, discourse on public life is taking place online. This new digital environment is characterized by abundance—an abundance of speakers, discussion, and access. But has this abundance of discourse—this democratization of knowledge, as some describe it—brought with it a corresponding increase in truth? Casting doubt on the assertion that online discourse, with its proliferation of voices, will somehow yield collective wisdom, Speaking Power to Truth raises concerns that this wealth of digitally enabled commentary is, in fact, too often bereft of the hallmarks of intellectual discourse: an epistemological framework and the provision of evidence to substantiate claims. Instead, the pursuit of truth finds itself in competition with the quest for public reputation, access to influence, and enhanced visibility. But as knowledge is drawn into the orbit of power, and as the line between knowledge and opinion is blurred, what role will the public intellectual play in the promotion and nurturing of democratic processes and goals? In exploring the implications of the digital transition, the contributors to Speaking Power to Truth provide both empirical evidence of, and philosophical reflection on, the current and future role of the public intellectual in a technologically mediated public sphere. Contributions by Barry Cooper, Jacob Foster, Karim-Ally Kassam, Boaz Miller, Liz Pirnie, and Eleanor Townsley. (shrink)

The mobile phone has become part of our everyday lives with astonishing speed. Over four billion people now have access to mobile phones, and this number keeps increasing. Mobile media technologies shape how we communicate with each other, and relate to the world. This raises questions about their influence on identity. Medium-specific properties and user-practices challenge the idea that we understand ourselves through stories. It is proposed that the notion of play sheds new light on how technologies shape identities. The (...) mobile phone mediates identities on four play levels: we play on the mobile, with the mobile, through the mobile, and at the same time we are played by the mobile. Mobile media bring new freedom of movement. Yet at the same time they constrict us. In this dialectic we become moving circles. (shrink)

Harold Garfinkel wrote a series of highly detailed and lengthy 'memos' during his time (1951-53) at Princeton, where remarkable developments in information theory were taking place. These very substantial manuscripts have been edited by Anne Warfield Rawls in Toward a Sociological Theory of Information (Garfinkel 2008). This paper explores some of the implications of these memos, which we suggest are still relevant for the study of 'information' and information theory. Definitional privilege of 'information' as a technical term has been arrogated (...) by information science, which thereby excludes the interactional occasions of use of 'information'. The authors examine some 'professional' and 'laic' determinations of 'information'. Looking at in situ uses of 'information' shows how dealing with 'information' is characterized by ad hoc practices, such as specifications, 'authorization' and 'particularization' procedures. The authors report on a series of workplace studies in academic libraries, looking at how librarians account for 'information' through practices of classification. Classifying 'information' is a member's local accomplishment, and explicating practices of classifying 'information' undermines the formal-analytic project of the 'Philosophy of Information,' as formulated, for instance, by Luciano Floridi. Implications of Garfinkel's work must remain beyond the purview of information science if it is to maintain its status as the recognized field dealing with 'information'. However, such omission risks 'losing the phenomenon' of 'information': to adapt an argument from Dorothy Smith (Catalyst, 8, pp 39—54, 1974), it trades upon decontextualized uses and recontextualizes 'information' for the practical purposes of formal analysis. (shrink)

Strikingly, theorizing about digital technologies has led us to recognize many habitual subjects of research as figures against fields that are also worthy of study. Communication, for example, becomes visible only against the field of silence. Silence is critically important for the construction of reality – and the social construction of reality has a complement, the also necessary contemplative construction of reality. Silence is so sensitive and fragile that an inability to achieve it, or to get rid of it, or (...) to correct the wrong kind of silence often provides early indicators of individual, group, communal, and society-wide stresses from information technologies. Indeed, we might treat difficulties with silence as miners treated canaries in coal mines, as early warning signals. The story has already been told that nightingales in London now have to sing so loudly in order to be heard above the ambient noise that the birds are in danger of breaking the noise ordinance law. Surely something has gone awry if nightingales break the law when they sing. Finding ways to protect silence as an arena of personal and social choice is a particularly poignant, evocative, and instructive ethical and policy horizon at this frontier moment for the human species. This article introduces the theory of the contemplative construction of reality, explores what the study of silence tells us about reality construction processes, and outlines a research agenda. (shrink)

This article considers recent changes in the definition of religion and of media as the basis for framing the study of their relation to one another and recent research in the intersection they have come to form over the last two decades or so. The history, materiality, and reception of each have colored scholarly work, and made ethnography, practice, material culture, and embodiment key aspects of scholarship. A new paradigm for some scholars for studying mediation is aesthetics—no longer understood as (...) the “philosophy of the beautiful,” but as the study of perception in the mediated practices that make up lived religion. (shrink)