Polymedia: Towards a new theory of digital media in interpersonal communication

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Madianou, Mirca and Miller, Daniel. 2013. Polymedia: Towards a new theory of digital media in interpersonal communication. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 16(2), pp. 169-187. ISSN 1367-8779 [Article]

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Official URL: http://ics.sagepub.com/content/16/2/169.abstract

Abstract or Description

This article develops a new theory of polymedia in order to understand the consequences of digital media in the context of interpersonal communication. Drawing on illustrative examples from a comparative ethnography of Filipino and Caribbean transnational families, the article develops the contours of a theory of polymedia. We demonstrate how users avail themselves of new media as a communicative environment of affordances rather than as a catalogue of ever proliferating but discrete technologies. As a consequence, with polymedia the primary concern shifts from the constraints imposed by each individual medium to an emphasis upon the social, emotional and moral consequences of choosing between those different media. As the choice of medium acquires communicative intent, navigating the environment of polymedia becomes inextricably linked to the ways in which interpersonal relationships are experienced and managed. Polymedia is ultimately about a new relationship between the social and the technological, rather than merely a shift in the technology itself.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877912452486

Additional Information:

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the ESRC in funding the study ‘Migration,
ICTs and the Transformation of Transnational Family Life’ (RES-000-22-2266).