Niels Ole Finnemann

Mediatization theory and digital media

Abstract In the 20th century, the term “media logic” was introduced to denote the influence of independent mass media on political systems and other institutions. In recent years the idea has been reworked and labeled “mediatization” to widen the framework by including new media and new areas of application. In Section Two the paper discusses different conceptualizations. It is argued that even if they bring new insights, they cannot be unified into one concept, and that they also lack a consistent definition of digital media. Section three provides a definition of digital media in order to identify new trajectories made possible by these media, which have led into a new media matrix built around the internet and mobile devices. It will be argued that the new media matrix cannot be understood from a point of view defined by the framework of 20th century mass media because digital media open new trajectories and because in the new matrix the previously existing media have had to transform themselves.

The Web and Digital Humanities: Theoretical and Methodological Concerns

Since the mid-1990s the Web has constituted an increasingly important source for studies of the recent history of society and culture, and a number of national and international Web archiving institutions have been established. This article discusses the different characteristics of Web materials and archived Web materials. It is argued that both of these characteristics differ from the concepts of digital materials developed within the frameworks of digital humanities and that the growing variety of different kinds of digital materials and processes calls for a reinterpretation of the computer, stressing the variability of the functional architecture of digital media.

Research libraries and the internet

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to improve comprehension of some of the intricate interrelations between research libraries, the role of media and the knowledge production system. Design/methodology/approach – This paper establishes arguments from a historical analysis of stages in the conceptual development of digital media and stages in the digitization of library functions. The historical approach leads to some discussions and forecasts of the future of research libraries. Findings – Digital media have a disruptive, revolutionary potential, but path dependency is often a modifying component in the historical development. This is demonstrated in different stages of the development of the interrelationship between digitization, digital media and research libraries. Digital media become disruptive due to the strength of the historical dynamic, rather than as a result of particular agencies. Today the historical dynamic has reached a point where all institutions concerned with knowledge handling wil...

Hypertext configurations: Genres in networked digital media

The article presents a conceptual framework for distinguishing different sorts of heterogeneous digital materials. The hypothesis is that a wide range of heterogeneous data resources can be characterized and classified due to their particular configurations of hypertext features such as scripts, links, interactive processes, and time scalings, and that the hypertext configuration is a major but not sole source of the messiness of big data. The notion of hypertext will be revalidated, placed at the center of the interpretation of networked digital media, and used in the analysis of the fast‐growing amounts of heterogeneous digital collections, assemblages, and corpora. The introduction summarizes the wider background of a fast‐changing data landscape.

Computerization as a means of cultural change: on the relations between information theories and the idea of an information society

Since World War II the concept of Information has received several new definitions. Information can be understood as knowledge in general, as theoretical, formalized knowledge in general or as knowledge related to specific domains or specific representational forms. Because of these mutually inconsistent concepts the common traits are to be found in a perspective transcendent to those theories. The central cultural changes, it is argued, take place on the level of the societal knowledge infrastructure, evolving from the knowledge infrastructure of the industrial societies as a long-term secularization process, resulting in new forms for representation and manipulation of knowledge. The process is seen as rooted in changes of the primary domains for knowledge extraction and in a change in the human relations to the languages in which we interpret the relations to nature.