Critique, Democracy, and Philosophy in 21^st Century Information Society.
Towards Critical Theories of Social Media.
The Fourth ICTs and Society-Conference.

Uppsala University. May 2^nd-4^th, 2012.

A unique event for networking, presentation of critical ideas, critical engagement, and featuring leading critical scholars in the area of Critical Internet Studies and Critical Studies of Media & Society.

Call for Abstracts

Announcement and Call-Flyer PDF

Confirmed Keynote Speakers
* Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University, Canada): Great Refusal and Long March: How to Use Critical Theory to Think About the Internet.
* Charles Ess (Aarhus University, Denmark): Digital Media Ethics and Philosophy in 21^st Century Information Society
* Christian Christensen (Uppsala University, Sweden): WikiLeaks: Mainstreaming Transparency?
* Christian Fuchs (Uppsala University, Sweden): Critique of the Political Economy of Social Media and Informational Capitalism
* Graham Murdock (Loughborough University, UK): The Peculiarities of Media Commodities: Consumer Labour, Ideology, and Exploitation Today
* Gunilla Bradley (KTH, Sweden): Social Informatics and Ethics: Towards a Good Information Society
* Mark Andrejevic (University of Queensland, Australia): Social Media: Surveillance and Exploitation 2.0
* Nick Dyer-Witheford (University of Western Ontario, Canada): Cybermarxism Today: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in 21^st Century Capitalism
* Peter Dahlgren (Lund University, Sweden): Social Media and the Civic Sphere: Perspectives for the Future of Democracy
* Tobias Olsson (Jönköping University, Sweden): Social Media Participation and the Organized Production of Net Culture
* Trebor Scholz (New School, USA): The Internet as Playground and Factory
* Ursula Huws (University of Hertfordshire, UK): Virtual Work and the Cybertariat in Contemporary Capitalism
* Vincent Mosco (Queen’s University, Canada): Marx is Back, but Will Knowledge Workers of the World Unite? On the Critical Study of Labour, Media, and Communication Today
* Wolfgang Hofkirchner (Vienna University of Technology, Austria): Potentials and Risks for Creating a Global Sustainable Information Society

Conference Topic

This conference provides a forum for the discussion of how to critically study social media and their relevance for critique, democracy, politics and philosophy in 21^st century information society.

We are living in times of global capitalist crisis. In this situation, we are witnessing a return of critique in the form of a surging interest in critical theories (such as the critical political economy of Karl Marx, critical theory, etc) and revolutions, rebellions, and political movements against neoliberalism that are reactions to the commodification and instrumentalization of everything. On the one hand there are overdrawn claims that social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, mobile Internet, etc) have caused rebellions and uproars in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, which brings up the question to which extent these are claims are ideological or not. On the other hand, the question arises what actual role social media play in contemporary capitalism, power structures, crisis, rebellions, uproar, revolutions, the strengthening of the commons, and the potential creation of participatory democracy. The commodification of everything has resulted also in a commodification of the communication commons, including Internet communication that is today largely commercial in character. The question is how to make sense of a world in crisis, how a different future can look like, and how we can create Internet commons and a commons-based participatory democracy.

This conference deals with the question of what kind of society and what kind of Internet are desirable, what steps need to be taken for advancing a good Internet in a sustainable information society, how capitalism, power structures and social media are connected, what the main problems, risks, opportunities and challenges are for the current and future development of Internet and society, how struggles are connected to social media, what the role, problems and opportunities of social media, web 2.0, the mobile Internet and the ubiquitous Internet are today and in the future, what current developments of the Internet and society tell us about potential futures, how an alternative Internet can look like, and how a participatory, commons-based Internet and a co-operative, participatory, sustainable information society can be achieved.

Questions to be addressed include, but are not limited to:

* What does it mean to study the Internet, social media and society in a critical way? What are Critical Internet Studies and Critical Theories of Social Media? What does it mean to study the media and communication critically?
* What is the role of the Internet and social media in contemporary capitalism?
* How do power structures, exploitation, domination, class, digital labour, commodification of the communication commons, ideology, and audience/user commodification, and surveillance shape the Internet and social media?
* How do these phenomena shape concrete platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc?
* How does contemporary capitalism look like? What is the role of the Internet and social media in contemporary capitalism?
* In what society do we live? What is the actual role of information, ICTs, and knowledge in contemporary society? Are concepts like network society, information society, informational capitalism, etc adequate characterizations of contemporary society or overdrawn claims? What are the fundamental characteristics of contemporary society and which concept(s) should be used for describing this society?
* What is digital labour and how do exploitation and surplus value generation work on the Internet? Which forms of exploitation and class structuration do we find on the Internet, how do they work, what are their commonalities and differences? How does the relation between toil and play change in a digital world? How do classes and class struggles look like in 21^st century informational capitalism?
* What are ideologies of the Internet, web 2.0, and social media? How can they be deconstructed and criticized? How does ideology critique work as an empirical method and theory that is applied to the Internet and social media?
* Which philosophies, ethics and which philosophers are needed today in order to understand the Internet, democracy and society and to achieve a global sustainable information society and a participatory Internet? What are perspectives for political philosophy and social theory in 21^st century information society?
* What contradictions, conflicts, ambiguities, and dialectics shape 21^st century information society and social media?
* What theories are needed for studying the Internet, social media, web 2.0, or certain platforms or applications in a critical way?
* What is the role of counter-power, resistance, struggles, social movements, civil society, rebellions, uproars, riots, revolutions, and political transformations in 21^st century information society and how (if at all) are they connected to social media?
* What is the actual role of social media and social networking sites in political revolutions, uproars, and rebellions (like the recent Maghrebian revolutions, contemporary protests in Europe and the world, the Occupy movement, etc)?
* How can an alternative Internet look like and what are the conditions for creating such an Internet? What are the opportunities and challenges posed by projects like Wikipedia, WikiLeaks, Diaspora, IndyMedia, Democracy Now! and other alternative media? What is a commons-based Internet and how can it be created?
* What is the role of ethics, politics, and activism for Critical Internet Studies?
* What is the role of critical theories in studying the information society, social media, and the Internet?
* What is a critical methodology in Critical Internet Studies? Which research methods are needed on how need existing research methods be adapted for studying the Internet and society in a critical way?
* What are ethical problems, opportunities, and challenges of social media? How are they framed by the complex contradictions of contemporary capitalism?
* Who and what and where are we in 21^st century capitalist information society? How have different identities changed in the global world, what conflicts relate to it, and what is the role of class and class identity in informational capitalism?
* What is democracy? What is the future of democracy in the global information society? And what is or should democracy be today? What is the relation of democracy and social media? How do the public sphere and the colonization of the public sphere look like today? What is the role of social media in the public sphere and its colonization?

The conference is the fourth in the ICTs and Society-Conference Series (http://www.icts-and-society.net). The ICTs and Society-Network is an international forum that networks scholars in the interdisciplinary areas of Critical Internet Studies, digital media studies, Internet & society studies and information society studies. The ICTs and Society Conference series was in previous years organized at the University of Salzburg (Austria, June 2008), the University of Trento (Italy, June 2009) and the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (Spain, July 2010).

About Uppsala, Uppsala University and the Department of Informatics and Media

Uppsala University (http://www.uu.se) was founded in 1477 and is the oldest university in the Nordic countries. Every year 45 000 undergraduate and graduate students enroll for classes. Uppsala is an academic and students-oriented city with old academic tradition.

The Department of Informatics and Media (http://www.im.uu.se) is a newly established institution at Uppsala University. Its research focuses on understanding and designing digital media in the information society. Among its educational programmes is a new master’s programme in Digital Media & Society that will start in August 2012.

Early May is a particularly nice time to come and visit Uppsala. It is the time of spring festivities and the awakening of nature and the city. The end of April has since medieval times been a time of celebrating the spring, especially in Eastern Sweden. Uppsala and especially Uppsala’s students have participated in this tradition, especially on the last of April (“sista april”, Valborg, http://www.valborgiuppsala.se/en) that features various celebrations and special activities all over the town.

Time Plan

February 29^th, 2012, 17:00, Central European Time (CET): Abstract Submission Deadline
Until March 11^th, 2012: information about acceptance or rejection of presentations
March 30^th, 2012, 17:00, CET: registration deadline
May 2^nd-4^th, 2012: Conference, Ekonomikum, University of Uppsala, Kyrkogårdsgatan 10, Uppsala

Abstract Submission

a) For submission, please first register your profile on the ICTs and Society platform:
http://www.icts-and-society.net/register/
b) Please download the abstract submission form:

http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/uploads/ASF.doc

, insert your presentation title, contact data, and an abstract of 200-500 words. The abstract should clearly set out goals, questions, the way taken for answering the questions, main results, the importance of the topic for critically studying the information society and/or social media and for the conference.
Please submit your abstract until February 29^th, 2012, per e-mail to Marisol Sandoval: marisol.sandoval@uti.at

Organizer
Uppsala University, Department of Informatics and Media, Kyrkogårdsgatan 10, Box 513, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden http://www.im.uu.se
Contact for academic questions in respect to the conference:
Prof. Christian Fuchs, christian.fuchs@im.uu.se , Tel +46 18 471 1019
Contact for questions concerning conference organization and administration:
Marisol Sandoval, marisol.sandoval@uti.at

Co-organizers:
* ICTs and Society Network http://www.icts-and-society.net
* European Sociological Association – Research Network 18: Sociology of Communications and Media Research, http://tiny.cc/hpdao
* tripleC – Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, http://www.triple-c.at
* Unified Theory of Information Research Group (UTI), Austria, http://www.uti.at
* Department of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark, http://www.imv.au.dk/en/studies/
* Institute for Design & Assessment of Technology, Vienna University of Technology, Austria http://igw.tuwien.ac.at/
* Jönköping University, School of Education and Communication, Sweden,
http://hj.se/en/about-the-university/information-material/campus-in-360-degrees/school-of-education-and-communication.html

Conference Board and Organization Committee
Charles Ess, Aarhus University
Christian Christensen, Uppsala University
Christian Fuchs, Uppsala University + UTI Research Group
Göran Svensson, Uppsala University
Marisol Sandoval, Unified Theory of Information Research Group
Sebastian Sevignani, Unified Theory of Information Research Group
Sylvain Firer-Blaess, Uppsala University
Thomas Allmer, Unified Theory of Information (UTI) Research Group
Tobias Olsson, Jönköping University
Verena Kreilinger, Unified Theory of Information Research Group
Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Vienna University of Technology + UTI Research Group

Registration and Conference Fee
Registration will open in early 2012 and more information about how to make payments will follow.
Registration fees:
Regular conference fee, including the conference dinner: 130 € or 1200 SEK
Regular conference fee, excluding conference dinner: 85 € or 780 SEK
Student conference fee, including the conference dinner: 110 € or 1000 SEK
Student conference fee, without conference dinner: 60 € or 550 SEK

Hotel Booking
More information about hotels in Uppsala will follow.

Welcome to Uppsala in Spring 2012!

Jenkins says that he has learned from and that his analysis is now deeply informed by the criticism of Critical Studies-scholars, who stress aspects of exploitation and free labour on web 2.0, and that it is important to take these criticisms into account. He wants to stress the “expansion of participation on the one hand and the expansion of a new business model, which tries to court and capture that participation on the other”.

Jenkins says that he wants to stress both structure + agency, pleasure +exploitation, whereas Critical Studies scholars would mainly stress structure and exploitation. He says that these scholars tend to conceive users as isolated, passive consumers, whereas for him they are a networked collective close to a Habermasian public sphere.

The question is how much Jenkins has really changed his analysis and how much he has really taken into account and engaged with the arguments of Critical Studies?

Jenkins simply constructs a dualistic “both…and”-argument based on the logic: “Web 2.0 is both …. and … ”: both pleasure and exploitation, both a space of participation and a space of commodification. He wants to focus on the aspects of pleasure and creativity and wants to leave the topic of exploitation to others and does thereby not grasp the dialectics at work and the relations of dominance we find on web 2.0. The question is not only what phenomena we find on social media, but how they are related and to which extent and degree they are present. There is no doubt that web 2.0 users are creative when they generate and diffuse user-generated content. But the question is also how many web 2.0 are active and which degree of activity and creativity their practices have. So for example in Sweden, one of the world’s most advanced information societies, only 6% of the population have their own blog, only 8% of all Internet users blog occasionally,  and only 16% of all Internet users upload video clips occasionally (Findahl 2010). Cultural Studies Scholars like Jenkins tend to overstate the creativity and activity of users on the web. Creativity is a force that enables Internet prosumer commodification, the commodification and exploitation of the users’ activities and the data they generate. Creativity is not outside of or dual to exploitation on web 2.0, it is its very foundation.

Another problem I have with Jenkins’ work is his use of the notion of participation. He has defined and continues to define a “participatory culture” as a culture:
“1.With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2.With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
3.With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices
4.Where members believe that their contributions matter
5.Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created)“ (Jenkins 2006, 7).
Jenkins has argued that increasingly “the Web has become a site of consumer participation” (Jenkins 2008, 137) and his ICA talk confirms that he holds on to this assumption and understanding of participation.

The problem with concepts like “participatory culture” is that participation is a political science term that is strongly connected to participatory democracy theory and authors like Crawford Macpherson and Carole Pateman. I have in contrast to Jenkins and others argued against a vulgar use of the term participation and stressed that Internet Studies should relate the usage of the term to participatory democracy theory, in which it has the following dimensions (Fuchs 2011, Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies, Chapter 7: Participatory web 2.0 as ideology; Fuchs 2008, Internet and Society):

(1) The intensification and extension of democracy as grassroots democracy to all realms of society
(2) The maximization of human capacities (Macpherson: human developmental powers) so that humans become well-rounded individuals
(3) Extractive power as impediment for participatory democracy:
Macpherson (1973) argues that capitalism is based on an exploitation of human powers that limits the development of human capacities. The modern economy “by its very nature compels a continual net transfer of part of the power of some men to others [for the benefit and the enjoyment of the others], thus diminishing rather than maximizing the equal individual freedom to use and develop one’s natural capacities” (Macpherson 1973, 10f).
(4) Participatory decision-making
(5) Participatory economy
A participatory economy requires a “change in the terms of access to capital in the direction of more nearly equal access” (Macpherson 1973, 71) and “a change to more nearly equal access to the means of labour” (73). In a participatory society, extractive power is reduced to zero (74). A democratic economy involves “the democratising of industrial authority structures, abolishing the permanent distinction between ‘managers’ and ‘men’” (Pateman 1970, 43).
(6) Technological productivity as material foundation of participatory democracy
(7) Participation as education in participation
(8) Pseudo-participation as ideology.
The problem is that for Jenkins participation means that humans meet on the net, form collectives, create and share content, etc. He has a culturalistic understanding of participation and ignores the notion of participatory democracy, a term which has political, political economic and cultural dimensions. Jenkins’ definition and use of the term “participatory culture“ ignores aspects of participatory democracy, it ignores questions about ownership of platforms/companies, collective decision-making, profit, class and the distribution of material benefits. The cultural expressions of Internet users are strongly mediated by the corporate platforms owned by Facebook, Google and other large companies. Neither the users nor the waged employees of Facebook, Google & Co. determine the business decisions of these companies, they do not “participate” in economic decision-making, but are excluded from it.
Internet culture is not separate from political economy, but is to a large extent organized, controlled and owned by companies (platforms like Wikipedia are non-corporate models that are different from the dominant corporate social media model). Social media culture is a culture industry. Jenkins’ notion of “participatory culture” is about expressions, engagement, creation, sharing, experience, contributions and feelings and not also about how these practices are enabled by and antagonistically entangled into capital accumulation. Jenkins has a reductionistic understanding of culture that ignores contemporary culture’s political economy. Furthermore he reduces the notion of participation to a cultural dimension, ignoring the broad notion of participatory democracy and its implications for the Internet. An Internet that is dominated by corporations that accumulate capital by exploiting and commodifying users can in the theory of participatory democracy never be participatory and the cultural expressions on it cannot be an expression of participation.

The most popular YouTube videos stem from global multimedia corporations like Universal, Sony and Walt Disney. Google and Facebook are based on targeted advertising models and a commercial culture, which results in huge profits for these companies. Politics on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are possible, but are minority issues – the predominant focus of users is on non-political entertainment. Web 2.0 corporations and the usage they enable are not an expression of participatory democracy. As long as corporations dominate the Internet, it will not be participatory. The participatory Internet can only be found in those areas that resist corporate domination and where activists and users engage in building and reproducing non-commercial, non-profit Internet projects like Wikipedia or Diaspora. Jenkins (and many others) continuously ignore questions of who owns, controls and materially benefits from corporate social media.

Jenkins says that social media users are like a Habermasian public sphere. One wonders if he has ever read “Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit” (Habermas 1962/1991), the book, in which Habermas stresses that the bourgeois public sphere has created its own limits and thereby its own immanent critique by a) limiting the freedom of speech and public opinion in those cases, where persons who do not have the same formal education and material resources for participating in the public spheres are facing unequal conditions of participation and exclusion (Habermas 1962/1991, 227) and by b) limiting the freedom of association and assembly in those cases, where big economic and political organizations dominate the public sphere (Habermas 1962/1991, 228). In the corporate social media sphere, attention is unequally distributed, big companies, celebrities and well-known political actors enjoy attention advantages and the most active prosumers come from the young, educated middle-class. Is this a Habermasian public sphere? No. Corporate social media are an expression of the limits of the bourgeois public sphere that Habermas has pointed out.

Jenkins says that now in contrast to his earlier works he has engaged with the arguments of Critical Studies scholars. But one wonders when listening to him misnaming Hans Magnus Enzensberger “Hans Mangus Eisensberger” and Mark Andrejevic “Michael Andrejevic”, if he really has engaged with Critical Studies. He furthermore attributes the quotation from Enzensberger that he uses (without giving page numbers, source and publication year; a practice he uses for all quotations in his presentation) to the 1960s, whereas Enzensberger published the work, from which the quotation stems (“Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medien”, Enzensberger 1970) in 1970. In it, Enzensberger not only talked about “emancipatory media usage”, but distinguished this concept from “repressive media use” and made clear, in contrast to Jenkins, that emancipatory media negate and aim at the emancipation of the media landscape from capitalism. In contrast to Enzensberger, corporatism and participation are in Jenkins’ view co-existent in the media landscape.

One is surprised that when Jenkins talks about media and politics that he does not talk about how the contemporary new student rebellions that resist the hyperneoliberal attack on higher education make use of social media, what the role of the media and social media has been in protests like in Madison, Spain, or Greece and in the rebellions and revolutions in Northern African countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, or Libya. There is also no discussion of WikiLeaks, the most important online medium talked about in 2010. Instead, what are the “political” examples of struggles that Jenkins comes up with like? The prototypical example he gives is that 400 fans demonstrated the power of consumption when they “resisted” the planned ending of the NBC programme “Chuck” by buying (“buycott”) “foot long sandwiches” at Subway as a sign of “protest”. What does it tell us if a leading scholar simply ignores discussing the role of the media in political rebellions, protests and revolutions and instead focuses on the old Cultural Studies hobbyhorse of the rebelling TV audience that is constantly “resisting” in order to consume ever more?

Media and Communication Studies should forget about the vulgar and reductionistic notion of participation (simply meaning that users create, curate, circulate or critique content) and focus on rediscovering the political notion of participation by engaging with participatory democracy theory. There was a time, when Cultural Studies scholars were claiming about others that they are economic reductionists. Today, it has become overtly clear – and Jenkins’ work is  the best expression of this circumstance – that cultural reductionism has gone too far, that the cultural turn away from Critical Political Economy was an error and that Media and Communication Studies needs to rediscover concepts like class and participatory democracy.

References

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. 1970. Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medien. Kursbuch 20: 159-186.

Findahl, Olle. 2010. Swedes and the Internet. Stockholm: .SE.

Fuchs, Christian. 2008. Internet and society. Social theory in the information age. New York: Routledge.

Fuchs, Christian. 2011. Foundations of critical media and information studies. New York: Routledge.

Habermas, Jürgen. 1962/1991. The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Jenkins, Henry et al. 2006. Confronting the challenges of participatory culture. Chicago, IL: MacArthur Foundation.

Jenkins, Henry. 2008. Convergence culture. New York: New York University Press.

Macpherson, Crawford Brough. 1973. Democratic theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pateman, Carole. 1970. Participation and democratic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

More information:
http://fuchs.uti.at/books/foundations-of-critical-media-and-information-studies/

Available from the same author: “Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age” (Paperback 2011)
http://fuchs.uti.at/books/internet-society/

Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies lays down foundations for the analysis of media, information, and information technology in 21st century information society, as well as introducing the theoretical and empirical tools necessary for the critical study of media and the information society.

Reasons for reading this book

* To find out more about critical theory today: The book updates critical theory for 21st century information society.
* To acquire tools for critical analyses: The book introduces methodological and theoretical tools for studying media, information technology, and the information society in a critical way.
* To read more about a critical theory of media and the information society: The book explains the foundations of a critical theory of media, information, information technology, and the information society.
* To find out more about how power structures frame the media and the Internet: The book provides a power structure analysis of the media and the Internet.
* To engage with alternative media and the alternative Internet: The book identifies alternative potentials of the media, culture, and the Internet.

Contents

1 Introduction

PART I: Theory

2 Critical theory today
3 Critical media and information studies
4 Marx and critical media and information studies

PART II: Case studies

5 The media and information economy and the new imperialism
6 The new crisis of capitalism and the role of the media and information economy
7 Participatory web 2.0 as ideology

PART III Alternatives

8 Alternative media as critical media
9 Conclusion

The Social Theory Research Network is one of 31 research networks of the European Sociological Association. It has approximately 200 active members. Whereas the other research networks’ task is to deal with specialized subfields of sociology, the mission of the Social Theory Network is to develop “concepts of orientation and outlining what can be called ‘conditional ontologies’ giving social research conceptual background”.

The research network’s Social Theory Conference on “Social Theory and the Sociological Discipline(s)” took place at the Innsbruck School of Political Science and Sociology on September 11-13, 2008. Organizer Frank Welz formulated the basic questions of the conference in the opening session: What is the role of transdisciplinarity in sociology? Is there still a general framework or discourse in sociology? Is a common or unified sociology possible? Is a common vocabulary possible or can it be developed?

Roland Robertson gave the main plenary talk, which covered the topic “Glocality and the Transdisciplinarity of Sociology”. Robertson is one of the sociologists that have coined the term globalization. His specific interpretation is that globalization processes are always accompanied by local adaptations and changes (localization). Therefore he speaks of glocalization. Robertson argued that sociology in a way has always been transdisciplinary and a meta-discipline because it covers various issues, which are subject of other disciplines, in their societal context. The intensified glocalization of the world would have brought about a need to overcome disciplinary fragmentation and to enter into a transdisciplinary dialogue in order to understand global society.

Besides Robertson’s call for a transdisciplinary sociology and the overall task of the conference, most of the presented papers dealt with very specialized topics that are relevant for subfields of sociology and social theory, but ignored the larger context of sociology and society as a whole and the academic world as a whole. Therefore the impression one could get was that many of the participants aim at a fragmentation of sociology into many different subfields such as gender sociology, economic sociology, sociology of education, sociology of law, urban sociology, political sociology, sociology of health, sociology of ethnic relations, racism and anti-Semitism, etc. Although specialization clearly is necessary in order to explain society, the question of how all these phenomena have become connected and are united on a meta-level, which is important for explaining what many now see as a global society, in which all phenomena have become networked and influence each other, should not be ignored. Social theory is a terrain that can deal with these questions.

The study of ICTs and society might be a paradigmatic case for the emergence of and the need for transdisciplines in the “global network society”. In my talk on “Critical Social Theory in the Age of the Internet”, I pointed out that the very topic of ICT&S research, the interrelationship of ICTs and society, social groups, and individuals, is one that cannot be studied by one discipline alone, but that requires the engagement of scholars from at least sociology, philosophy, media and communication science, and computer science. The subject matter of ICT&S is transdisciplinary in itself, it transcends the boundaries between the social and the engineering sciences.

Why is social theory important? Social theory produces a constitutive knowledge of the world that allows asking basic questions about the state of society and about the directions it could develop. The immanent diversity of social theory allows researchers and citizens to develop different understandings and different issues of society and to see how not only knowledge, but also interests are differing. Social theory allows us to ask new questions about the world and to use basic categories for developing understandings of the world. Social theory offers understandings and interpretations of society, social change, and societal causality. Social theory directs attention to certain issues and can help people organizing their experiences of the world and enabling useful responses to the world. Social theory in a transdisciplinary field like ICT&S allows making use of a contextual meta-knowledge about the relation of ICTs and society. People are trying to find ways of thinking about the world and its changes (such as the emergence of the Internet, globalization, etc) and ways of how to build the future of the world. Social theory can guide us in asking questions and trying to find potential answers about the state of the world.

Two sessions at the Innsbruck conference dealt with the role of critical theory in contemporary society. In my opinion critical social theory is necessary today in order to not remain fixed on knowledge that shows how society is, but deals with potential alternatives and how society could be. Critical theory therefore would be inherently normative, political, and would deal with basic questions of domination and power in society. In a transdisciplinary field like ICT&S, critical theory would be needed as complement and correction to empirical research, engineering, and design studies, because the latter three would typically operate in an instrumental way that is corrupted by dominant interests so that the focus is on technological rationality, technological fixes to societal problems, uncritical optimism about the potentials of technology for society, and economic and dominant political interests. Critical theory would remind us that there are huge problems in contemporary society, that technology alone is no solution, but frequently part of the problems, and that there is a need for imagining alternative futures, which requires a more philosophical meta-knowledge that engages with political questions.

Overall, the Innsbruck conference has shown that critical thinking and transdisciplinarity are important issues of contemporary sociology. But these issues are facing problems in their realization, talking about transdisciplinarity is in most cases easier than practicing it. Nonetheless a first starting point for alternative futures, also in academia, is a reflexive discussion about issues, which has taken place in Innsbruck.

Links:

ESA Social Theory Conference Innsbruck

ESA Social Theory Network 

European Sociological Association