Problematizing our Relations with Media Technologies

Problematizing our Relations with Media Technologies

We are immersed in a world mediated by information and communication

technologies (ICTs), both hardware (smartphones, smartwatches, home assistants)

and software (algorithms, software programs, and infrastructures such as Facebook,

Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat). We are transformed by these media, whether we have

invited them into our lives or not. We subsequently perceive and engage with the world

through these transformations. However, media literacy for the most part does not

provide clear assistance in helping us become aware of these effects. Thus far, media

transdisciplinary approach comprised of a general framework and specific instrument

is proposed. This approach is based on an interdisciplinary study of

postphenomenology, media ecology, philosophical posthumanism, and complexity

theory.

The framework of the approach described in this book uses six groupings of

relations: technological, sociocultural, time, space, mind, and body, with a main

emphasis on technological relations. How these relations, as well as their

interrelational effects, participate in the constitution of the human subject is explored

through an analysis of a museum selfie, which contributes to the development of a

pragmatic instrument that can be used for media literacy. The pragmatic instrument

constituting relations in their life. While it is not possible to completely understand the

complexity of all interrelations that constitute us, the more we can become aware of

how we relate with the world through these transformed aspects of our selves, the

greater chance we will have for reclaiming some of our agency, which arguably is the

main goal of media literacy.

Situating the Research

My own personal research interest began by focusing specifically on the effect

of ICTs on museum visitor experience. Investigating the mediating relations between

humans and technologies led me to an approach in philosophy of technology called

postphenomenology. While this helped me to understand the mediating role of

the developed Western world to live in a media-saturated environment. However, far

from being new, this trend began in earnest with Gutenberg’s invention of the printing

press,1 which eventually led to an exponential increase in literacy and a

democratization of information, education, and knowledge (Martin & Cochrane, 1994;

Ong, 2012; Postman, 2006; Strate, 2014). The printing press paved the way for

communication through mass replication and broad dissemination. Today, as we2

enter into the second decade of the twenty-first century, there is a ubiquity of screened-

communication technologies that allow us, for the most part, to communicate

whenever and wherever the mood strikes. The ubiquity of ICTs such as smartphones,

tablets, and laptops—sometimes referred to as technomedia (Han, 2008)—is the

(Twenge et al., 2019: 329). In the European Union (EU), while television is still the

most commonly used medium—84% watch it every day or almost every day and 94%

watch it at least once per week—the number of people who use the internet is catching

up, with 65% of EU citizens using it daily or almost daily and 77% using it at least once

per week (European Commission, 2018: 4). And throughout the world, a 2017 Pew

Research global survey showed that while smartphone ownership has remained

steady for developed nations—at around 72%— it is increasing in developing nations,

growing from approximately 25% in 2013/2014 to 42% in 2017 (Poushter et al., 2018:

4).

This environment of ubiquitous ICTs brings many benefits. With our GPS-

enabled smartphones we rarely become lost. Finding a place to eat in an unfamiliar

town, a place with good reviews and the cuisine of our choice, is now quite easy.

Keeping in touch with a large number of friends is as simple as checking our social

media feed. By allowing notifications to be sent to us, updates from our ‘friends’ are

smartphones have a wall/window trait. They create an inclusive ‘window’ to a virtual

world and community while also creating an alienating ‘wall’ to whatever and

whomever is in the person’s immediate surroundings. This reflects the idea that all

technologies are non-neutral and have both enabling and constraining aspects to them

(Ihde, 1990).

While many people embrace the changes and innovations in media technologies,

society’ (Center for Humane Technology, n.d.). There is increasing concern about the

amount of influence that the dominant GAFAM4 (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple,

and Microsoft) technology companies have (cf. Harris 2019, 2020; Hill, 2019; Twenge,

2017). Additionally, we should not only be concerned with these companies and the

content of media messages, but we also should pay attention to the actual technology

itself. While there have been certain fields of media studies that focus on the

technology or medium (media ecology, mediatization, 5 medium theory), the field of

media literacy has mostly avoided addressing the effects of the technological medium

in a rigorous manner. For all that, our daily lives are interconnected with more than

media technologies. There are sociocultural relations such as normativity, power, and

language. There are both positive and less than positive issues with our minds and

bodies that influence how we relate with media technologies. In addition, we are

always located within a specific time and place, both of which relate to media

chance we will have for reclaiming some of our agency, which I believe is one of the

primary goals of media literacy. Therefore, in an age of ubiquitous smartphones and

other communication technologies, implementing the approach developed in this book

can enable media literacy to identify and situate the complex interrelations, such as

the sociocultural (normativity, power, language) and the technological, which

The field of media literacy attempts to help educate people—especially the

young—in order to become more skilled and aware users of media by primarily looking

at ‘four components: access, analysis, evaluation, and content creation’ (Livingstone,

better understand and analyze professionally produced content, and the ‘skills in

analysis and evaluation open the doors to new uses of the internet, expanding access,

and so forth’ (5). Media literacy is vital to our everyday engagement with ICTs because

of their everydayness (Kim, 2015; Onge, 2018). The field of media literacy attempts to

shed light on how we use, and are potentially used by, media. With media technology

everywhere in our lives, it becomes ordinary; commonplace. These technologies are

part of the fabric of our existence, the ordinary environment within which we exist. For

example, according to a recent Nielsen report, the average adult (over eighteen years

of age) in the U.S. spends around 10 1/2 hours each day involved with some kind of

media6 (Nielsen, 2019: 3). We live in this mediatized environment and now, more than

Four Approaches to Media Literacy

analyze and evaluate media and media messages. Rather than creating grand

sociological theories, the focus of media literacy is mostly pragmatic, concerned with

helping the user improve their ‘ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create

messages across a variety of contexts’ (Livingstone, 2004: 3). Douglas Kellner and

Jeff Share (2005; 2007) identify four specific approaches to media literacy: media arts

education, the media literacy movement, a protectionist approach, and critical media

literacy. While these approaches —which I will briefly describe next—can be perceived

as individual approaches, in practice they can be combined with each other, which

offsets some of the drawbacks inherent in each approach when used independently.

The approach of media arts education focuses specifically on helping teach students

being ‘literate’. Kellner and Share (2005) state that media literacy ‘attempts to teach

students to read, analyze, and decode media texts in a fashion parallel to the

advancement of print literacy’ (372). Both of these approaches tend to perceive media

in a neutral manner.

However, the protectionist approach typically perceives media technologies in a

more determining manner. Some philosophers and media theorists approach media

and technology as something that people, especially children, should be protected

from. There are valid concerns for a protectionist approach to focus on. Jean Twenge

et al. (2018) find, ‘Adolescents who spent more time on screen activities were

significantly more likely to have high depressive symptoms or have at least one

suicide-related outcome, and those who spent more time on nonscreen activities were

less likely’ (9). Educating people on possible dangers and negative effects of media

falls within this protectionist approach. The approach of critical media literacy has

mediated text’ (8). This addition improves the ability of media literacy to explore and

bring to light important issues that are embedded in media messages (Kellner & Share,

2005; Lemke, 2006). On the whole, critical media literacy continues to focus on the

symbolic content of the message. While this is important, I believe that if the borders

of media literacy can be expanded to include the influence of the actual technological

medium as well as the broader context within which the media are used, then a space

is created for media literacy to be even more inclusive and effective. These four

do just that.

Benefits of Expanding Media Literacy

Supporting the expansion of media literacy, David Morley (as cited in Krajina et

al., 2014) says, ‘Media questions are important, then, but they only seem to me to be

really significant if they are set in a far wider frame, rather than focusing just on media

technologies themselves’ (684). One way to increase this frame is through

domestication theory, 7 which parallels aspects of media literacy. Roger Silverstone

(1994, 2006) developed domestication theory. Together with Morley, Silverstone

began researching television ‘in a broader framework’ (Morley & Silverstone, 1990:

31) in order to understand ‘the meanings of both texts and technologies, […] as

emergent properties of contextualized audience practices’ (32). Domestication theory

focused beyond simply the text and analyzed ‘a whole range of overlapping,

determinate and indeterminate social and cultural practices which together define—

for particular viewers at particular times in particular places—their relationship to the

medium’ (Silverstone, 1989: 108). While domestication theory has worked fairly well

to investigating the effects of a specific medium on individuals and societies. While

domestication theory includes attention to media objects such as television sets, it

often does so in an anthropological or ethnographic approach (cf. Horst, 2012; Lesage,

2013) with an emphasis on the context within which the object resides. Morley (2009)

states, ‘we need a new paradigm for the discipline, which attends more closely to its

material as well as its symbolic dimensions’ (114).

The study of media and communications can also have an interdisciplinary focus.

Shaun Moores (2005) explains, ‘media have to be understood in their broad social and

cultural contexts’ (3). He suggests that it is a common misconception that ‘media

studies are simply about “studying media” in isolation’ (3). Contextualizing ideas from

media literacy, and lends support to enhancing media literacy through a situating

approach. Beyond media literacy are other media-related fields researching the impact

of ICTs. Some of these are areas that focus on the technological features of media,

but their approach can often be more functional. Examples of this are digital literacy

(Koltay, 2011; Nichols & Stornaiuolo, 2019); data literacy (Koltay, 2015); and the digital

detox movement (Bauwens et al., 2019; Rauch, 2018; Ugur & Koc, 2015). Additionally,

there are disciplines that can provide insights outside of media and communications,

which focus on the relation between humans and technologies; these include

postphenomenology, actornetwork theory (ANT), and the general field of philosophy

of technology. Also, scholars like Rosi Braidotti, Katherine Hayles, and Donna

Haraway offer viewpoints from within philosophical posthumanism that focus more on

the human side of human-technology relations. They focus on concepts such as de-

centering the human and making sure marginalized groups are included in any

definition of ‘human’.

The Non-neutrality of Technological Relations

In order to investigate the influence of the technological medium I implement two

approaches: a microperceptual and a macroperceptual. The microperceptual

comprehend overall the effects of media and to fully become media literate. While the

four approaches in media literacy (cf. above) are effective in what they do, there are

several concepts from other fields of study that can help create a more robust

approach. In order to better understand technological objects, and our relations with

them, the fields of postphenomenology and media ecology excel at analyzing

technologies, covering the micro level of the embedded and embodied human subject,

as well as the sociocultural macro level respectively. Both also stress relationality as

a means to understand how we are constituted and transformed by the technological

relations in our lives.

technological artifacts seriously, recognizing the constitutive role they play in how we

experience the world, act in it, and how we are constituted as (moral) subjects’ (1).

Postphenomenology specifically analyzes the technological mediation using the

formula: I-technology-world. As humans, we are never standalone beings but always

in relation; these relations are non-neutral, 8 contributing to the co-constitution of our

selves, the specific technology, and the world (cf. Ihde, 1990; Rosenberger & Verbeek,

2015; Smith, 2015; Van Den Eede, 2016; Verbeek, 2005). The term ‘constitution’ is

used to describe the specific coming together or unique arrangement that takes place

in the process of these relations.

Postphenomenology describes four types of technological relations: embodied

(where we perceive the world through the technology, such as with eyeglasses);

hermeneutic (where we read the technology to better understand the world, such as

with a thermometer); alterity (where we interact with the technology as a quasi-other,

such as with an ATM machine); and background (which affect us but mostly go

unnoticed, such as a heating and cooling system for one’s house).

Media Environments: A Macro Approach

Media ecology is a macro approach that describes media environments. This

means that the approach often investigates the broader effects that media has on

cultures and societies. Marshall McLuhan (1994) is the person most often associated

with media ecology. McLuhan consistently attempted to get society’s attention focused

famous aphorism, ‘The medium is the message’ (7) was one such attempt. He often

explained it through the figure/ground analogy where one’s usual focus is on the figure

(in this case the media’s content) and the ground (in this case the medium) goes

unnoticed. While McLuhan popularized the study of media, the field of media literacy

& Wilson, 2014: 68). Duncan (2010) credited the work of McLuhan for inspiring him in

selfies. In order to manage the expectation of the reader, it is important to note that

my research does not reflect either a typical manuscript within continental philosophy

or a typical book in media and communications studies. For example, many books in

continental philosophy focus on a deep analysis of the writings of a specific

philosopher, and in media and communications studies, at least where I was

conducting my research in Brussels, it is most common to do an empirical study.

Instead, my goal is to engage contemporarily with a variety of philosophers and

philosophical approaches. Using the words of other philosophers and researchers

honors the fact that they wrote the words and that the words spoke to me, but I take

Concluding Thoughts

literate is but one fundamental aspect of life in a time of complex planetary existence.

Being able to situate whatever we study is critical in order to maintain perspective and

not fall prey to any one specific discipline or way of thinking. While I have attempted

to be broad in scope for understanding media, media literacy, and communications,

there are important ways of using media literacy that I only examine in a cursory

manner, since a more comprehensive study is beyond the focus of a single book.

Language is one such area. Signs and their ability (and inability) to transfer

information, specifically looking into encoding and decoding, is a large area of

research already established within media and communications; however, it is beyond

the scope of this book. Ethics and normativity, both immensely important, are also only

the words, ‘We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us’ (70). I investigate the

transformative effects of the tools we use daily in our lives, specifically ICTs. The

paradigmatic example of ICTs that I will often use throughout is the smartphone. These

technologies permeate our existence, especially in the Western world. ‘It takes less

and less deliberate action on our part to engage with media or ICTs. No longer do we

need to place ourselves behind a computer to go online; we carry “the online”

constantly in our pockets or on our wrists’ (Van Den Eede et al., 2017b: xvii). For many

of the people in the Western world, everyday life is completely entangled with media

technologies, so much so that these technologies are no longer in the forefront of our

attention; they have faded into the background.

It is vital that media literacy steps in and plays a role in helping us become aware

of the everyday media technologies in our lives and the influences they have upon our

selves and society (cf. Kim, 2015; McLuhan, 1994; Silverstone 1994; Strate, 2017). As

Catherine Adams and Terrie Lynn Thompson (2016) say, it is about understanding the

digital and ‘making its effects and affects visible’ (2). In order to have a more

comprehensive understanding of media literacy, we need a more complete

understanding of how human subjects are constituted through all of their relations. We