Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 22 Issue 8

Locating Media in Cultural Theories Osamu Note 1 Walter Benjamin, “ The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version” , in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings. Vol 3. 1935–1938 , translated by Edmund Jephcott, Howard Eiland, and others, pp. 101–133, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, 2002. 2 On media’s impact on emotions, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Emotions, Media and Politics , 2019, Polity Press. Also see Valerie Alia, The New Media Nation: Indigenous Peoples and Global Communication , 2010, Berghahn Books, New York, London, and Ashis Nandy, “Introduction: Indian Popular Cinema as Slum’s-Eye View of Politics.” in The Secret Politics of Our Desire: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema , Ed. Ashis Nandy, 1998, pp. 1–18. 3 Andreas Hepp, Cultures of mediatization, Polity, 2012. © 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue VIII Version I 9 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 A Author: Fuji Women’s University, Japan. e-mail: onote@fujijoshi.ac.jp Abstract- This paper examines means of facilitating research on media as a critical component of contemporary culture based on assessments of recent publications on media. The primary target is in the fundamentally heuristic value of social theories relative to the topic. Based on semiotics, practice, and, to a much lesser degree, speech act theory, analysts generate constructs wherein media often deviate from the concep tu al horizons in respective schemes. Reading Derrida’s views on speech act theory suggests that an endeavor to resolve the mismatch demands the decomposition of core conce pt s of a theory. Just as Anderson’s formulation casts a delicate light on the use of semiotics in media research, media prefigured through the lenses of the performative forces us to rethink its presence in everyday occurrence as a problematic unthought. The paper concludes that the application of speech act theory to media is a plausible solution to the problems so far encountered if accompanied by historical perspectives on the formation of illocutionary acts. Keywords: media, semiotics, practice, speech act theory, the significance of historical perspective in speech act theory, the iterability of speech acts. I ntroduction edia, as constituting mass-produced vehicles of information, existed long before Benjamin made his proclamation about the end of a cultural epoch. 1 However, media’s sphere of influence has never diversified as quickly as in our current period. Media today replicate in unfamiliar ways everyday across the globe, 2 and in versions of the newly emerged media culture, the difficulty of conceptualizing the unthought is no less problematic than in metropolitan counterparts. This occurs because media practices in various cultures acquire individuality, giving shape to a collective sense of the present in a way that is unique to the respective locality. To facilitate research on the formative power of media in a culturally sensitive manner, a method through which one can conceptualize the modus operandi beneath the surface of media practice is needed. What type of analytic strategy should we anticipate? Among M debates about the consequences of cultural dynamics over the past few decades, those pertaining to media deserve attention for two contrasting reasons. First, vindication of the domination of technology in daily life arose in an ever more tangible fashion with the integration of the trans-national networks of communications media. Second, embedded in the core instrumentalities for the processing of information available to the masses, media compounds the cultural complexity of the present. From romantic novels to participatory audiences linked via a simple notification service, study of the topics of media, as a disciplinary subject, invariably encompasses em e rging fields of empirical research, which show how media connect with diverse social phenomena in a manner so far unidentified. The task of this paper was to examine means of facilitating research on media as a critical component of contemporary culture. To limit the scope of my discussion, I rely on recent publications about social implications of media, especially works by Andreas Hepp and Nick Couldry. Based on the premise that contemporary life is irrevocably mediated, Hepp argues that a recipient sensitive theory should consist of three mutually related components: culture, communication, and media mediation. The central thesis revolves around what Hepp calls the metaprocess that communications technologies trigger through mediation into social life. Depicting how communication resources contribute to the making of unfamiliar norms characteristic of the present, Hepp argues that our lives are media centered. In doing so, Hepp sheds light on the molding effects of media on culture. 3 Although my attention is limited to the works of these authors, a cursory examination of recent publications on media revealed that analysts concur on the urgency of coping with the current situation based on interdisciplinary efforts. The use of insights gained through media study is no longer a choice but, rather, a necessity. The disciplinary fusions that arise in response to the contemporary global setting open otherwise imperceptible horizons on the latest phase of modernity. We have seen attempts to build a bridge between this discipline and several other branches of the social sciences, from audience perspectives on media content to the practice theory; multiple foci on media have accelerated debate about culture in the respective fields