Information before information theory: The politics of data beyond the perspective of communication

New Media and Society (forthcoming)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Scholarship on the politics of new media widely assumes that communication functions as a sufficient conceptual paradigm for critically assessing new media politics. This article argues that communication-centric analyses fail to engage the politics of information itself, limiting information only to its consequences for communication, and neglecting information as it reaches into our selves, lives, and actions beyond the confines of communication. Furthering recent new media historiography on the “information theory” of Shannon and Wiener, the article reveals both the primacy of communication in midcentury information theory, and also a striking resonance between these postwar communication theories and Habermas’s more recent communicative theory of democracy. To achieve a critical perspective beyond communication, the article proposes a media genealogy of the politics of subjects as a methodology for developing an analysis of how information formats us as subjects of data.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The sixth estate: tech media corruption in the age of information.Edward Howlett Spence - 2020 - Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 18 (4):553-573.
Religious Communication in the Context of Culture Media.Maria S. Petrushkevych - 2014 - Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research 5:56-68.
Using data visualizations as information communication tools during a crisis: a critical review.Dennis Mathaisel - forthcoming - Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society.
Infopolitics, Biopolitics, Anatomopolitics.Colin Koopman - 2018 - Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 39 (1):103-128.

Analytics

Added to PP
2019-01-13

Downloads
441 (#68,529)

6 months
143 (#34,728)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?