The Mediated Construction of Reality

by Couldry, Nick; Hepp, Andreas

• ISBN13: 9780745681313
• ISBN10: 074568131X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2016-12-12
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

Social theory needs to be completely rethought in a world of digital media and social media platforms driven by data processes. Fifty years after Berger and Luckmann published their classic text The Social Construction of Reality, two leading sociologists of media, Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, revisit the question of how social theory can understand the processes through which an everyday world is constructed in and through media.

Drawing on Schütz, Elias and many other social and media theorists, they ask: what are the implications of digital medias profound involvement in those processes? Is the result a social world that is stable and liveable, or one that is increasingly unstable and unliveable?

Author Biography

Nick Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science

Andreas Hepp is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI), University of Bremen.

Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction
Part I: Constructing the Social World
Chapter 2: The Social World as Communicative Construction
Chapter 3: History as Waves of Mediatization
Chapter 4: How We Live With Media
Part II: Dimensions of the Social World
Chapter 5: Space
Chapter 6: Time
Chapter 7: Data
Part III: Agency in the Social World
Chapter 8: Self
Chapter 9: Collectivities
Chapter 10: Order
Chapter 11: Conclusion
Notes
References
Index