Emphasizing the perspective of ordinary users, this book compares the uses of the internet in three centers of the global economy and world politics: China, Europe, and the United States. It examines the internet as the current centerpiece of communication systems encompassing interpersonal communication, mass communication, and social networking.
The internet is unique as a medium in that it hosts both "old" media and "new" media. As such, it also integrates the prototypes of one-to-one (interpersonal) and one-to-many (broadcast) along with many-to-many (social media) and many-to-one (surveillance) communication. This book considers how all these media and communicative practices are embedded in social structures, cultural traditions, and historical legacies of place. Comparing conditions in China, Europe, and the United States, the chapters provide an overview of the distinctive regulatory regimes framing the internet and its local uses, the place of the internet in everyday life in each setting, and how the internet serves as a resource for political, economic, and cultural actions and interactions.
Linking comparative analysis of media and social systems with ethnographic studies of internet usage on the ground, this book will be of particular interest to students and scholars working in global media, intercultural communication, and internet studies.
Author(s): Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Rasmus Helles
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 238
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Endorsement Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
List of contributors
Preface
Chapter 1 From media systems to communication systems
The internet and beyond
Communications and determinations
Historical prototypes of communication
Cultures of communication
Communication systems and other systems
Comparing communications, comparing methods
The chapters of the volume
Chapter 2 The communicative state of states
Communicating like a state
The local embedding of global technologies
The political economy of technology diffusion
Regulatory regimes reconfigured
Data lost, found, and re-made
Modeling communication systems
A model of global infrastructures
A model of national infrastructures
Summary of findings
Chapter 3 The internet and other media of communication
Media, meta-media, and communication repertoires
Mass communication – online and offline
Speaking to the few, the many, and the masses
Converging cultures of communication
Communicating now or later
Communicating here and there
Summary of findings
Chapter 4 Being social
Qualities and quantities of sociality
The communicative affordances of humans and technologies
Twelve degrees of contact
Social contacts
Cultural configurations
Can we talk?
Scalable sociality
Listening, searching, and sharing
Cultural configurations
Social contacts
Organizations, communities, worlds
Summary of findings
Chapter 5 How to do things with media
Communication as representation and action
Communications and capitals
Getting things done online
Navigating capitals
Mapping capitals
Summary of findings
Chapter 6 What media still do to people
Tracking the trackers
Technologies of tracking
Political economies of tracking
Cultures of tracking
Summary of findings
Chapter 7 Communication systems as scientific and normative agendas
Empirical findings
The cash value of empirical comparison
One-to-one communication
One-to-many communication
Many-to-many communication
Many-to-one communication
Capitalizing on communication
Cultures of communication
Theoretical inferences
Technological momentum
Capitalism with regional characteristics
Trading cultures
Opening a research agenda
Engaging public and political agendas
The capability of communication
Rights and resources
Institutions of communication and regulation
Reviews and previews of the internet
Chapter 8 Methodological appendix
Critical realism
Quantitative surveys
Critical knowledge interest
Questionnaire
Survey modes
Samples
Analyses and inferences
Qualitative fieldworks
Critical knowledge interest
Sampling for networks and maximum variation
Combining interviews and diaries
Analyses and inferences
Tracking the trackers
Critical knowledge interest
Sampling big data
Analyses and inferences
Logistics, ethics, and politics
Lessons of state and market
Habeas data
Do communication systems have politics?
References
Index
