Slides from section 3, Barbara Rampf

At last, the slides from Barbara Rampf's lectures: session 1, session 2 & session 3. Sorry for the delay in posting.

Thanks for sending your abstracts and proposals; please submit your essays by the end of March. Best regards,

Seminar with Robert G. Picard, Ph.D, 12:00-13:00, March 16th & 17th

Media economics and business dynamics advisor and analyst

On global media markets and policies

Days: Tuesday and Wednesday, March 16th & 17th

Time: 12:00 - 13:00

Place: Aula 13, Social Science Building

Mr. Picard's personal webpage available here.

Section 3 - Syllabus and recommended literature

Barbara Rampf, Institute for Communication Science and Media Research, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany
Pamplona, March 1st-3rd, 2010

“Global Communication” is inseparably linked to media and, nowadays, especially to the World Wide Web. We watch US-American soaps on TV, read news from all over the world in the daily newspaper and stay in touch with our international friends through Facebook. Even though I certainly agree with Mr. Volonté on the fact that it is dangerous to reduce globalization to the McDonaldization and digitalization of society, media must not be neglected when it comes to globalization. As far as I can see from your class’ Weblog, the class concentrated on the concept communication as a basic human act up to now. With my lectures we will turn the focus of the class to the part of communication that is transmitted by media. Since it is the media that enable global communication, and communication changes with the evolution of media from letter to e-mail, from phone call to Skype chat and radio show to Podcast, this is what we will spend our lectures on: The definition, connection and distinction of communication and media, the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ media, changes and developments over time, the challenges of digitalization, the concept of identity in the WWW and the question, where the ‘social media’ and recent innovations like Twitter and Google Buzz will finally lead us.

Here are the topics and some questions our three lectures will face:

1. Communication, Media and the Rise of the Internet: What’s communication? What are media? What happened to communication and media with the appearance of personal computers and the Internet?
2. Media (R)evolution and the Challenges of Digitalization: How did the media landscape change with the development of new media? What are the consequences for audiences, society, any one of us? How do the media affect each other? How do TV and Internet affect each other, e.g. in Germany and Spain?
3. New, Social and Future Media: What are, nowadays, ‘new media’? What’s ‘social’ about Web 2.0? How do concepts like identity and self-presentation fit in than context? Who are we online? The same persons we are offline? And finally, if media development continues in the same way, where will it lead us?

Some References:

Bowman, Shane/Willis, Chris (2003): We Media: How Audiences Are Shaping the Future of News and Information. Reston, Virginia: The Media Center at the American Press Institute. (Chapter 2: Cultural context: Behind the explosion of participatory media, pp. 15-20 & Chapter 7: How media might respond, pp. 58-61). URL: http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/download/we_media.pdf (5.2.2010).

Browning, John/Reiss, Spencer (1998): Encyclopedia of the New Economy. Part 1. In: Wired, Vol. 3/98, pp. 105-114.

Coffey, Steve/Stipp, Horst (1997): The interactions between computer and television usage. In: Journal of Advertising Research, 37/2, pp. 61-67

Ferguson, Douglas A./Perse, Elizabeth M. (2000). The World Wide Web as a functional alternative to television. In: Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 44/2, pp. 155–174.
Fortunati, Leopoldin (2005): Mediatization of the Net and Internetization of the Mass Media. In: Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies, 67/1, pp. 27-44.

Habermas, Jürgen (2006): Political Communication in Media Society: Does Democracy Still Enjoy an Epistemic Dimension? The Impact of Normative Theory on Empirical Research. In: Communication Theory, Vol. 16/4, pp. 411–426.

Hill, Anne/Watson, James/Rivers, Danny (2007): Key Themes in Interpersonal Communication: Culture, Identities and Performance. New York: McGraw-Hill. (Chapter 1: Communication by Design: How Models Contribute to our Understanding of Interpersonal Communication, pp. 6-47).

Kaplan, Andreas M./Haenlein, Michael (2010): Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. In: Business Horizons, 53/1, pp. 59-68.
Leiner, M. et al. (2003): A Brief History of the Internet. URL: http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml (13.2.2010).

Livingstone, Sonia (1999): New Media, New Audiences?. In: New Media & Society, 10/1, pp. 59-66.
McLuhan, Marshall (1999): Understanding Media. The Extension of Man. Eighth printing. MIT Press. (Chapter 1: The Medium is the Message, pp. 7-21).

Silverstone, Roger (1999): What's New about New Media?: Introduction. In: New Media & Society, 10/1, pp. 10-12.

Splichal, Slavko (2009): ‘New’ Media, ‘Old’ Theories. Does the (National) Public Melt into the Air of Global Governance?, In: European Journal of Communication, 24/4, pp. 391-405.

Rettberg, Jill Walker (2009): "Freshly Generated for You, and Barack Obama": How Social Media Represent Your Life. In: European Journal of Communication, 24/4, pp. 451-466

Zhao, Shanyang/Grasmuck, Sherri/Martin, Jason (2008): Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships. In: Computers in Human Behavior, 24, pp. 1816–1836.

Very important announcement

Unfortunately, and due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, Professor Olaf Jandura, the next appointed lecturer, won't be able to join us. Next week classes are of course maintained as scheduled, and instead of Professor Jandura we'll be receiving a colleague of his, Professor Barbara Rampf. She currently studies podcasts, online communications and new media from a psychological and psycholinguistical stance, making her presence very compelling to our general approach. Syllabus and references for the section will be posted right away.

Thanks for sending your abstracts and proposals. I got texts from almost everyone, which is great. Remember I expect to receive your essays as late as Friday the 26th, Saturday tops. As usual, if you desire any sort of feedback or comments please send an email. Looking forward to see you all in class on Monday. Regards,

Slides from section 2

You can find the slides from Professor Volonté's lectures here: part 1, part 2, and part 3.

I'll be looking in my inbox for abstracts and proposals until Saturday the 13th noon. Remember topic choice is pretty much up to you, though I should suggest you consider some linkage between you own thoughts and the triad design-object-meaning discussed in the past lectures.

Under request we can always schedule an appointment to go over your past essays. We can also work this out through the mail, if you rather have it that way. In spite of the herculian task this promises to be, I'll always get back to you if you send an email asking for feedback. You might have to be a little patient: I'm counting on your comprehension. Best of luck.

Seminar with Richard Arndt, Ph. D., 12:00-13:00, 2/09/10

Past-President, Co-Chair Advisory Council, Americans for UNESCO
Past-President, Fulbright Association


On Cultural Diplomacy: Culture or Propaganda?


Day: Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Time: 12:00-13:00
Place: Aula 13, Social Science Building

Mr. Arndt's extensive resume can be viewed here.

Section 2 - Syllabus and recommended literature

Paolo Volonté, Facoltá del Design, Politecnico di Milano
Pamplona, February 1st-3rd, 2010

Syllabus

Globalization is a main subject in communication studies today. But too often it is interpreted in terms of majors monopolizing the media markets all around the world, of trans-national interconnections among information systems, of Internetworking, and of a resulting mcDonaldization of world cultures. Too often communication is just identified with the media. This is a consequence of the original postulate that communicating primarily means speaking (verbal communication).

In our lectures we will rather take our stand on two main points: a) Globalization is not only a matter of communication, but first of all a matter of a mutual economic and cultural approaching of national and local societies, leading to a new kind of social structure, where communication holds a crucial role. b) Communication is not primarily a matter of language, but a matter of bodily relationship, whereas spoken language must be understood as a refined advanced processing of bodily communication. As a consequence, we must be aware of the fact that the process of globalization – that implies a general increase of economic welfare, an improvement of social mobility, a loss of reference points for the construction of self-identities – involves for the individual in western and westernized societies a broader and broader use of environmental means of communication to interact with the other: objects, actions, spatial displays.

Communication has become a pivotal factor in the “social tactics” (Baudrillard) that today’s people have to implement to cope with their everyday lives. But such pivotal communication has less to do with spoken language than with the display of our physical environment.
This circumscribes the set of issues we are going to deal with.
Accordingly, our three lectures will face the following three topics:

1) What does it mean communicating? The traditional “hydraulic model” that explains communication in terms of a transmission (or sharing) of contents between two (or more) subjects will be discussed. Jakobson’s well-known schema will be referred to. As a better explanation a phenomenological-inferential model of communication will be presented and recommended.

2) The fundamental role of environmental communication. As a consequence of the new model, it becomes clear that communication is primarily a matter of display of the other’s physical environment on the basis of a (partially) common culture. The function of objects as means of communication (“media”) will be considered as well as the social role of their independent biographies.

3) Objects as means of communication are a response to the increasing incidence of immaterial needs in the setting of human beings’ everyday life. The new condition in postmodern societies, where social relationship, inclusion and order are more and more mediated through communication, will be described. At the end the crucial relevance of communication, i.e. of environmental communication in today’s society should become manifest.

Some References:

Baudrillard, Jean (1972), Pour une critique de l’économie politique du signe, Gallimard, Paris (chp. 1).
Jakobson, Roman (1960), “Closing Statements: Linguistics and Poetics”, in Th.A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language, John Wiley & Sons, New York, pp. 350-377.
Sperber, Dan and Wilson, Deirdre (1986), Relevance: Communication and Cognition, Blackwell, Oxford (chp. 1).
Volli, Ugo (2000), Manuale di semiotica, Laterza, Roma-Bari (chp. 1).
Volonté, Paolo (2009), El creador de moda como creador de comunicación, in “Revista Impresa y Humanismo” XII, n. 2, pp. 193-225.
Volonté, Paolo (2009), Oggetti di personalità, in A. Burtscher, D. Lupo, A. Mattozzi and P. Volonté (eds.), Biografie di oggetti | Storie di cose, Bruno Mondadori, Milano, pp. 11-26. (English version available here)
Volonté, Paolo (2010), Designing Communicating Objects, in S. Vihma and T.-M. Karjalainen (eds.), Design Semiotics in Use, Helsinki (in print, available here).