engleski

What is critical about critical media sociology? A meta-theoretical approach

Before answering the question about what is critical, media sociology needs to answer what makes the study of media and communication sociological. Media and communication studies are notoriously difficult to define and circumscribe. Their heritage draws on rhetoric, philosophy, cultural studies, linguistics, psychology, political science, economics, and sociology. Contemporary influences include science and technology studies, urban studies, gender studies, computer science, and information science. In this presentation, I will argue that to proceed with untangling the sociological underpinnings of (critical) media sociology, three questions need to be addressed. First, what is the social ontology of suggested theoretical and empirical approaches? In other words, which social relations shape the embeddedness of media and communication in society? Second, what is the social epistemology of communication within the media? Put differently, what ʻknowledgeʼ (in a phenomenological sense) do media and communication provide? Third, how are social ontology and epistemology more broadly connected with injustice, inequality, environmental destruction, and power relations? Only focusing on the third axiological question leaves (critical) media sociology exposed to a priori reasoning charges. Power is not an inherent quality of all social relations. It is a process borne out of specific social relations and social representations of ʻknowledgeʼ. To be sociological and critical, theoretically and empirically, critical media sociology needs to trace (and expose) social relations that shape media and communication in society and influence which ʻknowledgeʼ is produced, distributed and consumed. Yet talking about social relations exclusively from the sociology perspective is equally filled with contradictions, competing theories and influences. No single theory can explain the role of media and communication sociologically. Nor is sociology a stable discipline with clear boundaries, theories, methods, and objects of research. A meta-theoretical approach will be used to provide potential pathways towards making sense of this complexity. I will briefly trace (classical) sociological theories at the micro (e.g. Simmel, Mead, and Goffman), mezzo (e.g. Foucault and Habermas), and macro level (e.g. Beck, Giddens, Marx) of society to provide starting points for answering questions of social ontology and epistemology in (critical) media sociology. I will then close with a brief overview of critical political economy and Marxian approaches that provide the most coherent and consistent theoretical system that answers all three questions relevant to (critical) media sociology. Marxian approaches are also filled with internal struggles and nuances in explaining certain features of (capitalist) society. While many traditional approaches reduce social ontology to class relations and social epistemology to ideology, other contributions from New Readings of Marx, Open Marxism, and related approaches expand social ontology and epistemology towards a much broader concept of the social form (e.g. Bonefeld ; Heinrich ; Murray, and Smith). Social forms are a way in which elements of wealth production (means of production, labour power, money, etc.) become embedded in society as commodities, capital and social relations. The approach opens the way towards theorising neglected elements of social relations within and outside of capitalism and potential ways towards expanding (critical) media sociology today.

Sociology of media, political economy of media, theory

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