What’s the ‘Situation’? Media Change Research and the Complexity of Transitions in Culture and Society

• In Event: Reflections on Methodology: Yesterday and Today

Abstract

Change’ and ‘transition’ are trending topics in media and communication research. Change however is often seen as encapsulated in the latest technological innovation and research is often characterized by presentism. We argue that substantial research about media change has to elucidate the interrelations between change in media, culture and society as dialectically connected and that research on media change that fails to historicize its topic is likely to produce shallow accounts. We review media evolution theory and concepts of mediatization as approaches to media change that aim beyond short-lived technology driven research interests and apply broader scopes and historical long-term perspectives. We propose the notion of ‘situation’ as a construct to approach media change empirically and reflect three different dimensions (change, media, coping) to define complex situations as stem cells of empirical research on media change. We conclude with early 20th and 21st Century journalism as examples of contextualized situations.

Authors

• Christian Schwarzenegger, Augsburg U

• Manuel Menke, Augsburg U

• Thomas Birkner, U of Münster