jeudi 7 décembre 2017

The mediatization of time conference

International Conference 2017 "The Mediatization of Time:
New perspectives on media, data and temporality"
December 7-8, 2017
ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research
University of Bremen, Germany

Recent innovations in the digitalization and datafication of communication fundamentally affect how people conceptualize, perceive and evaluate time to create the kind of world they live in. The conference invites participants to think through the interplay of media and data in respect of the way social time is constructed, modulated, and experienced. This allows to appreciate how new technologies and representations deeply affect the temporal organization of today’s media suffused societies, and it also sheds light on transformations in mediating time. We assume that mediatization as a fundamental societal change that interweaves with the development and spread of communication and information technologies leaves its mark on the ways we process and order the pace, sequence, rhythms and of social reality.

This conference invites to think through the role of media and data people have or had at hand to
time their interactions, relations, and states of being.

_________________ ABSTRACT ____________________

« Recent French perspectives on temporalities in media and communication research »
Jean-Claude DOMENGET et Carsten WILHELM
In 2016, the French society for information and communication sciences (SFSIC) held its 20th congress on the theme « Time and Temporalities in information-communication » in Metz, France. This nationwide congress, which takes places every two years, is the major scientific event structuring the field of information and communication sciences (SIC) in France. This recent edition questioned the advances in research on the notions of info-communicational time and temporalities, the necessity of a critical vigilance on the use of time, on temporalities in their classic form as well as in digital contexts. It furthermore developed research questions emerging due to socio-technical evolutions. Following the peer reviewed selection of contributions, their presentations to the community and the editorial work following the congress, it appears that the question of mediatized times (our plural) has evolved. Our contribution will sketch this evolution and present the themes and emerging research questions presented in the congress. This will allow us to pinpoint multiple research perspectives on our shared object of research.
The paradigm of “mediatized time” is one of the oldest ones in France when it comes to analyzing the relationship between media, time and temporality. From the sixties onwards, research has addressed live broadcast on television. In the eighties and nineties, critical approaches have centered on the social and political consequences of media time (Vitalis, Tétu, Palmer et Castagna 2000), others on the different forms of the representation of time and its mise en recit by the media (Lits, 1995), on television flow, programmed media time, etc. An original approach has been interested in the temporalities of reception and the use of media inspired by French sociology of use (Thévenin et Wilhelm 2017).  These different approaches are characterized by an international outlook, at least at its beginnings with Italian inspiration (Domenget et Aroldi, 2003), as well as a rich supply of paradigms (narratological , socio-technical, socio-political, organizational). They have, however, never succeeded in becoming a transversal domain of study as has, at a certain point for example, the question of the territoire.
The 20th congress has allowed us to identify several current research topics concerning the question of time and temporality in SIC.The first questions time and temporalities in mediation devices (dispositifs de médiation) in relation to social time (Lamy and Carré, 2017). These contributions deal specifically with the transformation of our relationship to time, its constraints, limits and potential. We will thus be able to evoke how media space-time shapes our own relation to time (Lafon). The second theme deals with the links between communication and organizations, through temporal accelerations, at the heart of the West’s social-liberal modernity (Lépine, Alemanno and Le Moënne, 2017). Indeed, these transformations are linked to an "ephemerization of the present", to dyschronias that produce many tensions. Nevertheless, they also produce adjustments allowing for a differentiated reappropriation of time. These changes have been addressed in the field of information and communication technologies for learning (Bessières) as well as health (Lamy). A third theme focuses on time in arts and culture, transformed by so-called cultural or culture industries (Bonaccorsi, Collet and Raichvarg, 2017). It is concerned with the place that communication devices and information systems can claim in the cultural inscription or de-inscription of cultural objects and phenomena. Taking into account the place of history in the communicational thought of culture (Moeglin) should allow to analyze the industrial futures of cultural objects as well as their patrimonial temporalizations. A final theme contributes towards an epistemology of information and communication sciences on temporalities, through concepts and methods (Domenget, Miège and Pélissier, 2017). This is still work in progress needs since, as one of the issues raised by researchers states, there is a tropism of research on the "times of the SIC" (Gallezot and Marty) for short-time phenomena, taking place in the present or the future at the expense of taking into account phenomena of a longer duration (George and Sénécal). However, researchers propose and experiment new research practices (Mercier), allowing to think collectively about the digital ecosystem (Zacklad).
After having established these themes and approaches, our contribution will propose several possible research perspectives. A first deals with the relationship between a perception of time at the level of the individual and the long-term history. A second perspective concerns the analysis of the temporal culture of societies in late modernity, from the point of view of acceleration (Rosa, 2010). A final perspective aims to reinforce the consideration of the cultural dimension in the analysis of temporalities and in the study of our objects of research (Hall, 1984). On arrival, if interdisciplinarity seems essential, and in contrast to the movement provoked by academic institutionalization which has meant for most humanities and social sciences an increased specialization and a closure from neighboring disciplines, present info-communicational approaches would benefit from an ecological or ethical effort, which constitutes the basis of a new collective representation of our relationship to time (Grossin, 1996).
References
Bonaccorsi, J., Collet L. and Raichvarg, D. (2017). Les temps des arts et des cultures. Paris : L'Harmattan.
Domenget, J-C. and Aroldi, P. (2003). La télévision et la question du temps ? Éclairages « transalpins » sur quelques notions. Recherches en communication, (20), 225-248. Disponible sur http://sites.uclouvain.be/rec/index.php/rec/article/view/4601/4331
Domenget, J.-C., Miège B., and Pélissier, 2017. Temps et temporalités en information communication : Des concepts au methodes. Paris : L'Harmattan.
Grossin, W (2016). Pour une science des temps. Introduction à l’écologie temporelle. Toulouse : Editions Octares.
Hall, E.T. (1984). La danse de la vie: temps culturel, temps vécu. Paris: Seuil.
Lamy, A. and Carré, D. (dir.) (2017). Temps, temporalité(s) et dispositifs de médiation. Paris : L'Harmattan.
Lépine, V., Alemanno, S. and Le Moënne, C. (dir.) (2017). Communications et organisations : accélérations temporelles. Paris : L'Harmattan.
Lits, M. (1995). Temps et médias. Un vieux couple dans des habits neufs. Recherches en communication (3), 49-62. Repéré à http://sites.uclouvain.be/rec/index.php/rec/article/view/541/521
Rosa, H. (2010) Accélération, une critique sociale du temps. Paris : La Découverte.
Wilhelm C. and Thevenin, O. (2017), «The French Context of Internet Studies: Sociability and digital practice»,  in Kommunikationswissenschaft im internationalen Vergleich : Transnationale Perspektiven, (sous dir. de) S. Averbeck-Lietz, Springer VS.
Vitalis, A., Tétu, J-F., Palmer, M. and Castagna, B. (dir.) (2000). Médias, temporalités et démocratie. Rennes : Apogée.

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