Extending our ways of being and doing: celebrating the communicative affordances associated with a diverse collection of digital and visual media

It is not only communication studies scholars’ whose fascination with new media is showing no signs of abating. Even those responsible for managing predigital media like radio, television, and film have become preoccupied with the task of identifying ways to embrace the ever increasing array of new digital platforms that are transforming the processes of information exchange, social connection, entertainment, and political influence across all manner of professional and personal realms. It is hard to imagine a sphere of activity where human agency has not been enhanced or transformed by the introduction of digital capabilities. In fact, few would disagree with the proposition that digitisation is redefining what it means to be human in much the same way as the radical changes that took place in modernity (Capurro, 2017). Just as industrialisation reformed relationships between people,work and society and confronted the individual with challenges to their sense of who they were, so too is digitisation. Being human now means spending large swathes of time in virtual networked environments behaving in ways that foster voyeurism, narcissism, and exhibitionism (Capurro, 2017) but also self-awareness (Nielsen, 2017), self-expression (Lane, et al. 2019), authenticity and community (Cunningham & Craig, 2017) and the social connectivity (Van Dijck,2012) necessary to inspire new forms of collective action and achieve greater social inclusion. Digitisation is constantly extending our ways of being and doing; providing experiences that contribute to a sense of being a digital self (Cover, 2016), a self that can have unprecedented agency. This issue of Communication Research and Practice is a celebration of the communicative affordances associated with a diverse collection of digital and visual media. It examines these media’s contribution to such diverse processes as home renovation, political influence, satirical political commentary, the expression of feminist agendas, and social inclusion.

In the first article, “Actor, intermediary, and context: media in home renovation and consumption practice”, Aneta Podkalicka (2019) questions the efficacy of the prevailing theories of behavioural change and social practice for achieving environmentally sustainable practice. Specifically, she explores how the actor-intermediary-context nexus plays out in the realm of home renovation and consumption practices in order to argue for conceiving of media and communication’s role as complex, multi-purpose and networked in a cultural context. In doing so, she is supporting the proposition that it us unrealistic to place individual consumer’s choice at the heart of our explanations of consumptive practice (See Shove, 2010).

In the second article, “Across the great divide: gender, Twitter, and elections in New Zealand and the United Kingdom”, Susan Fountaine, Karen Ross and Margie Comrie (2019) examine how female members of parliament (MPs) in these two countries use twitter during political campaigns. British female MPs were found to be more interactive and informal in the way they integrate Twitter into their campaign activities compared to their New Zealand counterparts who employ more formal and controlled broadcast strategies and have a more integrated approach that incorporates mainstream media. In presenting these contrasts, the article draws attention to the different ways the tension between equalisation and normalisation in media use can be resolved.

In the third article, “A new, online culture war? The communication world of Breitbart.com”, Mark Davis (2019) uses the far right website Breitbart.com to show how a ‘culture wars discourse’ is reinvigorating the key ideas that were at the heart of the USA’s culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. In doing so, he highlights the increasing power of digital networked media to frame cultural politics and suggests that, despite the way they peddle false propositions, their influence should not be overlooked.

Hanem El-Farahaty’s (2019) article, “Egyptian satirical graphics on social media after the Arab Spring” continues the political theme, presenting a unique insight into how satirical cartoons were used on two social media platforms to confront political issues in Egypt following the political uprising that is referred to as the Arab Spring.

In contrast to the previous articles in this collection, Marilyn Mitchell’s (2019) article deals with a media that predates the digital age. In her article “Communicating women’s perspectives and concerns in the films of Julie Lopes-Curval using l’écriture feminine”, she illustrates how women’s perspectives are cleverly foregrounded in the work of a well-know French filmmaker Julie Lopes-Curval. In doing so, she highlights the way this medium can be used in complex ways to confront and recalibrate gender politics.

This issue finishes with an article that continues the conversation Justine Humphry began in the previous issue (5-02) on digital inclusion. Gerard Goggin, Kate Ellis and Wayne Hawkin (2019), use their article “Disability at the centre of digital inclusion: assessing a new moment in technology and rights” to argue that disability should be treated as a strategic resource that can help society navigate the ‘possibilities and perils’ of emerging technologies by virtue of the way it provides a ‘testbed’ for establishing how such new technologies can be employed to achieve better futures for all.

Together, the six articles in this issue celebrate the diversity of contemporary communication media and provide an interesting array of examples of how various media platforms animate and transform the socio-political sphere, extending our ways of being and doing.