Mediatization and Mediality of History

Mediality, Intermediality, Infrastractures (2020-2022)

Intermediality: The Nature of the Mediatic Revolutions and Their Social and Cultural Consequences
Media history is dedicating increasing attention to the intermedial character of communication processes and the advent of new media is constantly rearranging the hierarchy of the means of communication. For an analytic study of the active role played by the media in influencing the course of events, it is necessary to reflect on intermediality i.e. on the (at times conflictual) coexistence of different kinds of means of communication and on the constant evolution of the media ensemble.

Media and the Perception of Technological Innovation: The Ascent of Artificial Intelligence
The media constantly provide information regarding technological development, thus steering the debate on its importance in all areas of life, as can be clearly seen from the prominent case of artificial intelligence. Long-term observation can provide clues on how the media effect technological innovation and guide society’s perception of technological development, which in turn influences the means of communication themselves.

Infrastructures of Communication: How Technology Shapes Knowledge
Infrastructures, understood as institutions and their networks, contribute in constructing and maintaining the economic, social, and cultural standards of the modern and contemporary state. The concept of “communication infrastructure” allows uniting studies on the mediality of history with studies dedicated to the transformation of modern economic, political, and social structures as well as highlighting the infrastructural dimension of communication processes. At the same time, the institutional, economic, and technological implications of modern media history are to be examined.

 

Mediatization and Mediality of History (2017-2019)

ISIG’s research focuses on the concepts of “mediatization” and the “mediality of history”, with particular emphasis on the transnational and interdisciplinary dimensions. The term “mediatization” refers to a series of long term historical processes, marked by an increasing permeability of society to conditioning by mass communication and phenomena of self perception that society develops through the media. Basically this applies a multimedia and multidimensional approach to analyse the media in the context of the socio-political and cultural transformations that have characterized the modern and contemporary periods. Treating the theme of mediatization from a historical perspective makes it possible to reconstruct the development of the media in all their dimensions (economic, technical, cultural, political) through analysis of the contents, strategies of use, and effects that the media have produced in different historical contexts.

Date: 2017-2022