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The Liquefaction of Publicness: Communication, Democracy and the Public Sphere in the Internet Age, Vol. 25 - 2018, No. 1
The Double Hermeneutics of Communication Research
Communication research engages in double hermeneutics, interpreting a social reality that has already been interpreted by individuals and institutions in and through communication, and feeding its reinterpretations back to society. This article stakes stock of the field as an instance of what Aristotle had referred to as productive sciences, a practical discipline exploring not only what communication is, but also what it could be. In the digital media environment, the interplay of metadata with standard types of communication—one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many—is key to what communication could become, but remains undertheorised and understudied. In conclusion, the article calls for a reinvention—reinterpretation—of a field that emerged in response to mass communication.
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