New Communication Uncertainties and Mediapolitics

Abstract

The universalist semantic of interaction faces an acute dilemma. Not only are its theoretical premises questionable at least in the form in which that theory was framed; it is also seriously at variance with the liquid uncertainties of our realities today. The space of our interpersonal interactions has changed and many interactional transactions now take place electronically, giving rise to what Manuel Castells has termed the ‘network society’. Diffuse, constantly changing networks ‘constitute the new social morphology of our societies’, while ‘the diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies’ our lives and challenges our conventional notions of the private and public, the ‘lifeworld’ of everyday culture and the ‘system’ of rationalization (Castells, 1997: 469). Ontological liquidity and technological diffusion coalesce with the fundamental uncertainty of the act of communicating.