Digital Materialisms: Frameworks for Digital Media Studies

Abstract

Since the 1980s, digital materialism has received increasing interest in the field of media studies. Materialism as a theoretical paradigm assumes that all things in the world are tied to physical processes and matter. Yet within digital media studies, the understanding of what should be the core object of a materialist analysis is debated. This paper proposes to untangle some of the principal theoretical propositions that compose the field of digital materialism. It outlines six frameworks that share the assumption that digital stuff is composed of material entities: the Berlin School of media, the field of software studies, the literary critique of electronic texts, the forensic approach, the 'new materialist' media ecology, and the field of Marxian critical studies. These different options are positioned along three main lines of tensions: between a semantic and an engineer's perspective on media, between technological and social determinism, and between critical or post-humanist political propositions.

Figuring Digital Cascades

“…Entman's initial cascade model also failed to take fully into account part of the material-technical dimension of digital networks. To incorporate this dimension into our analysis, we turn to the perspective of platform studies, which has largely contributed to foregrounding the socio-materiality of technical networks in the field of media analysis (Casemajor 2015). This framework investigates how the Web as a socio-material assemblage is shaped not only by physical and software architectures but also by social practices and political and economic interests (Bogost and Montfort 2009).…”

Media Matter

“…In all the cases highlighted above, a materially inflected focus re-appropriates the discourse on ecology and puts it to use in environmental contexts. This move makes visible new and previously understudied areas that merit the critical attention of scholars in media and communication studies (Maxwell and Miller 2012;Casemajor 2015). However, it does not render the metaphorical dimension of the concept of media ecology redundant or useless.…”

“…Providing a different typology of materialist advances and directing specific attention to digital technologies, Casemajor (2015) has identified four schools of thought that speak to a material turn in media research: German media theory, software studies, studies of electronic texts and hypertexts, and forensic inquiries. Associating these approaches with the works of Kittler (1990), Manovich (2013), Hayles (2002), and Kirschenbaum (2008) respectively, Casemajor points out that the mentioned frameworks "provide tools to critique the trope of immateriality [in traditional studies of new media]", but do not "address frontally the political dimension of digital materialism" (10).…”

“…The present contribution is indebted to both Packer and Crofts-Wiley's (2012) mapping of the field and Casemajor's (2015) re-politicisation of particular materialist outlooks. In contrast to Casemajor, however, I perceive politics as an integral aspect of all materialist inquiries -not only those concerned with environmental impacts and political economy.…”

Un principium équivoque pour les sciences de l’information et de la communication ?

“…Parfois dans le prolongement d'une écologie des médias, parfois aussi dans celui d'une anthropologie marquée par un « tournant matériel » ou bien dans celui d'une histoire des médias devenue archéologie des médias (Ernst, 2015), les thèses présentées ont, le plus souvent, en commun de mettre l'accent non sur l'information, mais sur les médias eux-mêmes, ain d'échapper aux discours vagues sur la société de l'information et sur le virtuel. Cependant, l'essentiel ne paraît pas se trouver là, mais plutôt dans une prise de position post-cartésienne et post-humaniste (Casemajor, 2015), qui se traduit par la suppression des dualités humain / non-humain et vivant / non-vivant. Cette prise de position est très visible lorsque les propos tenus visent à donner une déinition de la matière.…”