COST IS0906 has contributed to the EC Consultation on directions for Future and Emerging Technologies research

COST IS0906 has contributed to the EC Consultation on directions for Future and Emerging Technologies research: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/fet-proactive/fetconsult2012_en.html

Contribution available at: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/fet-proactive/fetconsult2012-results_en....

Media, Technology and Users: Perspectives of Acceptance, Participation, and Social Relations

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have revolutionized the way modern societies function. People have found creative ways to make use of media and ICTs for their own purposes and to shape the public sphere bottom-up. Many, if not all, social, political and economic domains are transfused by media (mediatisation).

Against this background, the COST Action IS0906 ‘Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies’ (2010-2014) would like to point out five aspects relating to future and emerging technologies that seem especially relevant from the field of media and communication studies.

1) The instrumental role of communication for future and emerging technologies

New technologies are conveyed to a wider public through media coverage, ranging from traditional mass media to Web 2.0 platforms such as blogs or social networks. Often, public acceptance and policy support for new technologies hinge on media discourse and advocacy. Thus, it seems crucial to observe and explain the processes of public discourse on technology and gain insight into the relationship between technology acceptance, risk perception and media use.

2) Social relations and future and emerging ICTs

It is humans who handle and use technology. And they do so primarily for creating and sustaining (mediated and non-mediated) social relations. The development of ICTs can only be worthwhile for contemporary societies if it takes into account the evolution of social relations. Thus a deep and profitable understanding of the future development of innovative technologies should include an interdisciplinary study of the co-evolution of technologies and human relations: The goal is to show how human factors and human practices are shaping (or should shape) technological evolution and vice versa.

Specifically, this question becomes important in times of crisis. For example, the European public sphere has experienced economic, social and political challenges that have been encouraging nationalism, social fragmentation, xenophobia and even a certain ‘cultural clash’ (particularly North-South). In this domain, pressing questions concern, for instance, the potentialities and the risks of digital and interactive media for social cohesion and inclusion; how these media are actually being used by people, in the management of their social relations at distance (for instance, those activated by the wave of migration within Europe) and in a possible greater desire of participation in the public sphere in a crisis.

3) Alternative democratic participation and future and emerging ICTs

As also discussed in an ESF Forward Look, participation in society, particularly in regard to political participation, has drastically changed since the advent of the Internet and specifically the age of Web 2.0. Given the context of contemporary crises and the dilemmas facing democracy, we urge deepened investigation into modes of alternative democratic participation, that is, beyond electoral politics. We suggest focusing research attention on what we would term ‘political agency in context’. Thus, research must be adamant about specifying the forms of technology-mediated engagement and participation as well as their contingencies. Unpacking this thought leads us to propose a set of seven interrelated research topics that can serve to structure and coordinate research of a multidisciplinary character:
• Engagement (and disengagement): what are its subjective perceptions, its expressions in regard to political, identities, knowledge, and normative frameworks.
• Participation (and its absences): what are its extent and modes in specific situations, and how does it relate to the key dimensions of agency (i.e. knowledge, values, practices, identities, and memory)? Embedded here is also the question of the evolving manifestations of politics and the political.
• Maps and genealogies of power (and counter-power): how power is produced, reproduced, challenged, and altered with the help of new communication technologies? This can be pursued by examining how overarching social, cultural, economic and political parameters impact on participation in concrete settings. – and the significance of communication technologies and the socio-cultural parameters of media environments in this regard.
• The Web’s role in contributing to the development of participation: how does/can Web use (including mobile technologies) enhance civic agency, knowledge, practices, and identities? This theme includes opening up the traditional public sphere to issues that are not associated with formal politics.
• How can existing engagement in mediated popular culture, consumption, and sociality be linked to the political?
• In what ways can the development of media literacy – especially beyond the classroom – be linked to the notion of democratic engagement, especially among young citizens, and how can it be connected to their lifeworlds?
• What kind of social and media policy is needed to foster the democratic potentials of the digital media?

In all of these questions, accessibility becomes an issue. Any future technology must be widely accessible - language-wise, financially, regarding special needs, and regarding the individual level of technology literacy.

4) Cross-disciplinary research on future and emerging ICTs

Overall, we see a strong need for cross-disciplinary, cross-paradigm research. As a result of the emergence of the ‘mediatized’ society characterized by media digitization and convergence, the need to cross-fertilize research paradigms has acquired a new urgency. In order to increase the explanatory power of research-based understandings of the social, political, and cultural challenges following from ICT innovations, social research must combine a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, and practice multimethod research which combines practical analysis and solid empirical experiences with epistemological, theoretical, and methodological reflection. Such a cross-fertilization is needed in order to formulate a research agenda that combines studies of online and offline interaction, exploring the complementarity of face-to-face and technologically mediated communication in business, public administration, and everyday life.

5) Research infrastructures for social sciences driven research on future and emerging technologies

Given the importance of the above-mentioned topics, and the evident imminent role of the social sciences here, it is surprising however that the funding possibilities for social sciences driven research have become increasingly scarce with the recent frameworks and the overall funding budget is still minimalistic compared to the budgets in the engineering and sciences clusters. The social understanding of technologies is crucial for science, industry and policy-making, and should therefore be further supported through adequate research funding frameworks.

Another issue that has emerged as a major obstacle to current research efforts is that data collection has become more complex, diversified, and fragmented. Thus, an essential requirement for future European research on ICTs is the development of a research infrastructure that will facilitate the integration of diverse online resources for data collection, data analysis, data sharing, and collaborative projects - across national and disciplinary borders.

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The authors of this contribution are Claudia Alvares (Lusofona University, Portugal), Helena Bilandzic (University of Augsburg, Germany), Klaus Bruhn Jensen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Nico Carpentier (Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and Charles University Prague, Czech Republic), Peter Dahlgren (Lund University, Sweden), Jakob Linaa Jensen (Aarhus University, Denmark), Geoffroy Patriarche (Université Saint-Louis – Brussels, Belgium), Cristina Ponte (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal), Kim C. Schrøder (Roskilde University, Denmark), Nicoletta Vittadini (Catholic University of Milan, Italy), and Frauke Zeller (University College London, UK).

COST is an intergovernmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology, allowing the coordination of nationally-funded research at the European level. See http://www.cost.eu.

The Action “Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies” (2010-2014) is coordinating research efforts into the key transformations of European audiences within a changing media and communication environment, identifying their complex interrelationships with the social, cultural and political areas of European societies. A range of interconnected but distinct topics concerning audiences are being developed by four Working Groups: (1) New media genres, media literacy and trust in the media; (2) Audience interactivity and participation; (3) The role of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships; and (4) Audience transformations and social integration. See http://www.cost-transforming-audiences.eu.