Ursula Plesner

An actor-network perspective on changing work practices Communication technologies as actants in newswork

New information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as email and the internet have altered the work practices of journalists. This article introduces Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a framework for analyzing the relation between new ICTs and changing practices in newswork. It argues that ANT offers an exciting new perspective on ‘holistic’ studies of mass mediation practices, because it calls for a focus on heterogeneous actors: people, ideals, symbolic constructions, and material elements are seen as equally important elements to analyze. The article offers empirical examples of how ICTs have become elements of specific actor-networks, and argues that, at this point, the new aspect of them is their seamlessness. It is argued that while including materiality — technology — in analyses of journalism practices we should refrain from essentializing the ‘effects’ of ICT. Rather, technology should be treated analytically as an actant tightly integrated in networks with other actants, without being assigned particular forces or consequences.

Studying Sideways: Displacing the Problem of Power in Research Interviews With Sociologists and Journalists

One strand of the qualitative interview literature has been concerned with the normative or otherwise problematic implications of studying down or studying up (i.e., interviewing “disadvantaged” people or elites). This interview literature is part of a tradition of taking up the problem of power inequalities in relation to the people we study. This article argues that not all types of social scientific research interviews benefit from an à priori problematization of power and control, ethics and equality, or emancipation. From a constructivist perspective, the article seeks to displace the methodological concern with power related to the ideas of studying up or down and introduce another set of concerns in relation to producing good empirical material when we “study sideways.” The argument is based on analyses of interview situations from a concrete research project, where researcher and researched share professional background to some degree, where negotiations replace a researcher-imposed dialogue, and where the circulation of shared or common concepts messes up an orderly division between researchers’ vocabulary and interviewees’ vocabularies. It is proposed that when we study sideways, we must cultivate interview methods which cause confrontation and disagreement—not to acknowledge asymmetry but to enhance the quality of research.

BEFORE STABILIZATION: Communication and non-standardization of 3D digital models in the building industry

Developments within 3D digital modelling are often heralded as a much needed solution to problems of information loss and communication difficulties within the building industry. Despite the abundance of technical possibilities for innovation, however, there is currently no standardized, widely used digital model that solves these problems. Rather, actors in the building industry are assembling technological and other elements in various ways, trying to configure a stable innovation. This article sets out to describe the innovation communication involved in different emerging assemblages by focusing on the articulation of different expectations to their promises. We identify three different sets of expectations, namely visions related to building information modelling, Virtual Worlds and interactive simulation platforms. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how visions are a crucial part of the communication about innovations in information and communication technology (ICT), and to contribute to an understanding of how different visions promise particular future configurations of workflows, communication processes, politics, economic models and social relations. Hereby, the paper adds to the literature on the relationship between ICTs and organizing, but with a distinct focus on innovation communication and distributed innovation processes taking place before ICTs are stabilized, issues which cannot be captured by studies of diffusion and adaptation of new ICTs within single organizations.

Selling the selling point: How innovation communication creates users of Virtual Worlds Architecture

This article explores how virtual worlds are rhetorically constructed as obvious, innovative spaces for communication about architecture. It is argued that the marketization of an innovative use of new media platforms happens in early phases of the innovation processes, and the success of new media technologies such as virtual worlds hinges on the creation of expectations, which are intertwined with the discursive construction of future users. Drawing on the sociology of expectations and the sociology of technology, the article argues that the configuration of expected users is a central part of the communication about the innovation. It is demonstrated that the creation of markets does not begin when innovations such as Virtual Worlds Architecture are settled, but is intertwined with early expectations about their promises and limitations. Rather than seeing virtual worlds as settled and secluded sites for social and cultural innovation in themselves, we have examined how actors involved with them try to sell them as such. A crucial challenge for these actors turns out to be the interpretative flexibility of the innovation, since arguments designed to attract one kind of expected user might problematize the configuration of other types of users.

Strategy and new media: A research agenda:

Despite current attention to the materiality of organizations and the performative role of tools, devices, artefacts and objects in processes of strategy-making, the impact of new media has not been thoroughly conceptualized in the strategy literature. We argue that new media challenge core assumptions in strategy about control, boundaries and choice. To understand their constitutive effects and the implications for strategy-making, it is necessary to develop a research agenda oriented towards understanding technological affordances – but not only in local practices. Due to vital characteristics of new media, this research agenda should be informed by a socio-material sensibility, network thinking and a longitudinal perspective.

The performativity of “media logic” in the mass mediation of science

Studies of the use of research-based expertise in the mass media often demonstrate how experts are used to confirm journalists’ angles on particular stories or how research-based knowledge claims are twisted. Both among practitioners and science communication scholars, such practices are often explained with reference to a pervasive “media logic.” “Media logic” is constructed as governing choices and interactions of researchers and journalists. This article critically examines the extensive use of the term “media logic” to explain choices, changes or content in media production, and presents Actor-Network-Theory as an approach that invites us to ask what takes place in practice without resorting to such generalizing explanatory devices. The article argues that a quick jump to “media logic” as an explanation may imply that we forget its contingency and ignore what actually takes place in journalists’ and researchers’ negotiations about texts and facts in the mass mediation of science.

Spaces of open-source politics: Physical and digital conditions for political organization

The recent proliferation of Web 2.0 applications and their role in contemporary political life have inspired the coining of the term ‘open-source politics’. This article analyzes how open-source politics is organized in the case of a radical political party in Denmark called The Alternative. Inspired by the literature on organizational space, the analysis explores how different organizational spaces configure the party’s process of policy development, thereby adding to our understanding of the relationship between organizational space and political organization. We analyze three different spaces constructed by The Alternative as techniques for practicing open-source politics and observe that physical and digital spaces create an oscillation between openness and closure. In turn, this oscillation produces a dialectical relationship between practices of imagination and affirmation. Curiously, it seems that physical spaces open up the political process, while digital spaces close it down by fixing meaning. Accordingly, we argue that open-source politics should not be equated with online politics but may be highly dependent on physical spaces. Furthermore, digital spaces may provide both closure and disconnection between a party’s universal body and its particular body. In conclusion, however, we propose that such a disconnection might be a precondition for success when institutionalizing radical politics, as it allows parties like The Alternative to maintain their universal appeal.

Digital technologies and a changing profession: New management devices, practices and power relations in news work

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate what role particular new management devices play in the development of the news profession in an organizational setting shifting to new technologies. Design/methodology/approach This is studied through of observations of work practices in the newsroom and through documentary research and qualitative interviews with managers, editors, and other professionals. Findings It is shown that management devices such as the news table and the news concept are central to the reorganization of news work, as they realize managers’ strategies, just like they produce new practices and power relationships. It is shown that the devices produce increased collaboration among journalists and interaction between managers and output journalists, that mundane work and power is delegated to technological devices and that news products are increasingly standardized. Practical implications The wider implications of these findings seem to be a change in the journalistic profession: TV news journalism is becoming less individualistic and more collective and professionalism becomes a matter of understanding and realizing the news organization’s strategy, rather than following a more individual agenda. Originality/value The paper’s originality lies in showing that profession and management are not opposed to each other, but can be seen as a continuum on which journalistic and managerial tasks become intertwined. This is in contrast to previous research on news work. Furthermore, the paper’s focus on devices opens up for conceptualizing power in the newsroom as distributed across a network of people and things, rather executed by managers alone.