Logistics is a relatively hidden subject in tourism studies. This theoretical article advances a logistical approach to the study of tourism in the platform economy. It is argued that the platform economy rests on logistical accumulation, which means that human practices are not just predicted but ultimately steered in order to generate profitable digital data streams. At the same time, “smart”, mobile media platforms provide unprecedented logistical affordances to people to navigate and manage various flows. Tourism is thus taken as a logistical intersection, where the steering mechanisms of the platform economy entangle with the needs and capacities for orientation, coordination and orchestration among travellers. The social expansion of logistical accumulation raises questions of human agency, especially in relation to tourism, as well as a need to study how the basic tension between “steering” and “being steered” unfolds in different sociocultural settings. The article provides a critical account of the logistical frictions, conflicts and inequalities characterizing digital tourism geographies. It also actualizes the need for further exchanges between media studies, tourism studies, and critical geographical research on logistics.
This article provides a Bourdieusian analysis of the mediatized lifeworlds of so-called elite cosmopolitans. Based on interviews with Nordic expatriates employed by United Nations organizations in Geneva, the study looks at how the increasing dependence on new media influences the field of United Nations organizations and the trajectories of cosmopolitan subjects. Theoretically, the analysis builds on two key concepts: communicational doxa, which establishes a link between Bourdieu's field theory and critical mediatization theory; and cosmopolitan capital, understood as a sub-form of cultural capital. The findings suggest that mediatization alters the social conditions for accumulating cosmopolitan capital. However, the appropriation and mastery of new media do not hold any symbolic value as such, but tend to expand the possibilities for making investments in the field without altering its overarching logic. It is also shown that new professional media habits are often interwoven with private communication and the emotional needs associated with highly mobile family lives, thus underlining the indirect nature of mediatization in this context.
Through the appropriation of new media we can extend our capabilities as autonomous human beings. Media can liberate us from the constraints of time, space and social cohesion. At the same time, however, mediatization means that new forms of social and technological dependence emerge, accompanied by experiences of frustration, stress and existential anxiety. Mediatization is an inherently dialectical process, where design plays a lubricating role through making media devices and services culturally meaningful and user-friendly, sometimes even self-instructive. But critical understandings of mediatization also actualize the growing need for design that can respond to the new discontents that haunt our media-saturated lives. This regards anything from the shaping of digital interfaces to the creation of alternative physical environments for media (non-)use. In this talk I present a systematized view of the interplay between mediatization and design processes, followed by a critical discussion of the current role of social design initiatives
Inspired by Henri Lefebvre's triadic model of social space, this article reconstructs mediatization as a sociospatial concept. Such a reconstruction corresponds to a holistic, nonmedia-centric view of mediatization, and provides an analytical framework for generating complex and critical understandings of the media's role in the production of social space. Mediatization is defined in terms of 3 sociospatial regimes of dependence, which can be applied to different domains of society: (1) material indispensability and adaptation, (2) premediation of experience, and (3) normalization of social practice. Focusing on everyday life, the article outlines how the articulations of these regimes shift with the social integration of so-called transmedia technologies, and advances a critical humanistic research agenda for approaching the social consequences of mediatization.
Through the appropriation of new media people can extend their capabilities as autonomous human beings. At the same time, however, mediatization means that new forms of social and technological dependence emerge, accompanied by experiences of frustration, stress, and anxiety. Such experiences can be identified above all within the realm of mediatized work/life – an increasingly blurred social terrain where the prospects of media-enhanced, flexible working conditions easily evolve into further socio-technological entanglements with media. Against this background, this article assesses the prospects of employing mediatization theory as a framework for developing better-informed social design practices. It argues that social design should have as its goal to enhance the capacity among social agents to maintain a sense of autonomy in relation to mediatization. Following a cultural materialist view of mediatization, the article introduces a two-dimensional matrix for systematizing (in terms of objects and objectives) how social design may address the social consequences of mediatization. The practical implications of the suggested framework are discussed in relation to empirical examples taken from the realm of flexible work.