News
On Pre-technological Media
by Erhard Schüttpelz (University of Siegen/CRC)
If we have always lived in a media society, what are media actually? Erhard Schüttpelz explores this question in his new book Medium, Medium: Elemente einer Anthropologie (Medium, Medium: Elements of an Anthropology).
About the Book
Nowadays, the term “medium” is often used in connection with technology, although media have long existed in other mediating roles between humans and non-humans. With this study, Schüttpelz shifts the perspective of media studies and asks the question of what media actually are.
Editoral text:
When we think of media, we usually have in mind its manifestation in technical devices, from the first telegraph to today’s communication and storage media. This ignores the fact that the term medium also has a meaning that existed before technology, in which it refers to those who can mediate between heaven and earth, between the living and the dead, between those present and those absent. If mediality can be understood over millennia as a practice that connects humans and non-humans, a rupture takes place in the modern age: Media fall into one with technology, and a diverse strangeness of media becomes an interplay of prosthesis and remote control.
In his groundbreaking study, Erhard Schüttpelz shifts the perspective of media studies: from weapon to container, from writing to language, from magic to ritual. And he poses the question of what media actually are if we have always lived in media societies.
About the Author
Erhard Schüttpelz has been Professor of Media Theory at the University of Siegen since 2005 after studying German, English and Ethnology in Hanover, Exeter and Bonn and conducting research in Oxford, Cologne, New York, Constance and Vienna. He is the principle investigator of the project P02 “Media of Praxeology II: Anthropology of Cooperation: Skill, Deixis, Interaction” at the CRC 1187.
How does intelligent, sensor-based media technologies change everyday household practices?
by Tim Hector, Niklas Strüver, Stephan Habscheid and Dagmar Hoffmann (all Siegen University, CRC)
In our new Working Paper (No. 36) “Sensory Practices in the Smart Home. Findings and Methodological Reflections from an Interdisciplinary Pilot Study”, Tim Hector, Niklas Strüver, Stephan Habscheid and Dagmar Hoffmann present the first results of their interdisciplinary pilot study on how smart home devices change household ecologies and processes. The study is part of their research project at the CRC, which studies the domestication of smart technologies as a case of cooperative production of media and data.
About the Working Paper
The working paper presents, as a proof of concept, initial findings from an interdisciplinary pilot study that employs methods from sociological and linguistic media research to investigate how everyday household practices are represented and transformed through smart, sensor-based media technologies, which can be observed as multimodal interactions. Within the framework of the project “B06 – Un-/Desired Observation in Interaction: Smart Environments, Language, Body, and Senses in Private Households” in the Collaborative Research Center “Media of Cooperation”, the domestication of smart technologies is examined as a case of the cooperative production of media and data—both with and without consent (Star and Griesemer 1989).The focus of the presented pilot study is on human-machine cooperation, in which the more or less noticeable capture of behavioral and environmental data by sensors contributes to the semi-automated shaping of household ecologies and processes. We reconstruct and analyze forms of interaction and communication with interfaces of these modern technologies, as well as the sensory orientations and bodily practices of users. Furthermore, we examine the spatial and material arrangements that are essential for the social and communicative organization, as well as the purposiveness and goal-directedness of socio-technical actions involving these devices. We present exploratory media-sociological and media-linguistic analyses of a living environment equipped with smart devices, exemplified by two specific devices: an Amazon Echo Show (10th gen.), a ‘rotating’ smart speaker with a voice user interface, camera, display, video/touch screen, and camera-based motion detection, and a smart, internet-connected air fryer. The study demonstrates that users are embedded in human-machine interaction through their human sensorium—both socio-cognitively and physically—and are challenged in situ to make various decisions.
About the auhtors
Tim Hector (Dr. des.) works as a researcher at the Collaborative Research Center 1187 »Media of Cooperation« in the project B06 »Un/desired Observation in Interaction: Smart Environments, Language, Body and Senses in Private Homes« at Siegen University. He did a PhD in applied linguistics on the linguistic domestication of voice assistants. His research interests include media and cultural linguistics, conversation analysis linguistic domestication of media technologies and spoken language in human-computer-interaction. Niklas Strüver (M.A.) works as a researcher at the Collaborative Research Center 1187 »Media of Cooperation« in the project B06 »Un/desired Observation in Interaction: Smart Environments, Language, Body and Senses in Private Homes« at Siegen University. He is a doctoral student at the graduate school MGK of the CRC, studying Voice Assistants as sociotechnical phenomena.
Stephan Habscheid (Prof. Dr.) is a professor of German studies and applied linguistics at Universität Siegen. He is principal investigator of the interdisciplinary project B06 »Un/desired Observation in Interaction: Smart Environments, Language, Body and Senses in Private Homes« at the Collaborative Research Center 1187 »Media of Cooperation«, Universität Siegen (together with Dagmar Hoffmann). His research interests include media linguistics, linguistic praxeology, language in institutions and organizations as well as small talk and conversation. Dagmar Hoffmann (Prof. Dr.) is a professor of media sociology and gender media studies at Universität Siegen, Germany. She is principal investigator in the interdisciplinary project B06 »Un/desired Observation in Interaction: Smart Environments, Language, Body and Senses in Private Homes«« at the Collaborative Research Center 1187 »Media of Cooperation«, Universität Siegen (together with Stephan Habscheid). Her research is focused on media and cultural sociology, digital literacy, and political participation.
Über die Working Paper Reihe
The Working Paper Series of the Collaborative Research Center 1187 „Media of Cooperation“ promotes inter- and transdisciplinary media research. The CRC Working Paper Series provides an avenue for rapid publication and dissemination of ongoing research at or associated with the CRC. The Working Paper Series aims to circulate in-progress research to the wider research community beyond the CRC. Publication in the Working Paper Series does not preclude publication of a more developed version of the same paper in another journal. Contributions from established academics and postdoctoral researchers are welcome. The articles are published in open access and a limited number of print copies. We ask interested parties to send a paper proposal (max. 300 words) and a short biographical note (max. 50 words). Please follow our style guide for manuscript submission.
Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) – Project number 262513311 – SFB 1187 Media of Cooperation. Series’ editor: Dr. Karina Kirsten, University of Siegen & CRC 1187 Media of Cooperation.
„digital:gender – de:mapping affect. a speculative cartography”
edited by Julia Bee (Ruhr-University Bochum), Irina Gradinari (Fernuniversität Hagen) and Katrin Köppert (Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig)
How do digital objects influence our critical thinking when they affect our emotions? Julia Bee explores this question together with colleagues in the publication digital:gender – de:mapping affect. a speculative cartography, published in 2025.
About the book
The publication looks at the intersections that now exist between gender studies and the objects of digital media culture—memes, apps, posts. Speculative experiments are carried out to test out entry points to the contemporary constellations of digital media culture and gender theory approaches using individual objects. Feeling and affect play a key role here: having our emotions appealed to by artistic and media objects changes our critical thinking about them. The “cartography” of contemporary digital media culture thus constitutes a situated method.
About the Author
Julia Bee is a professor of Gender Media Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum, with a special focus on diversity. In her research, she focuses on intersectional approaches and gender media theory. She leads the projects B09 “Bicycle Media. Cooperative Media of Mobility” and Ö “Public Relations: Cooperative Research and Design” at the Collaborative Research Centre.
Irina Gradinari is Junior Professor of Gender Studies at FernUniversität in Hagen. Katrin Köppert is Junior Professor of Art History/Popular Cultures at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.
“Seeing Style: How Style Orients Phenopractices across Action, Media, Space, and Time”
Niklas Woermann (University of Southern Denmark)
How do media practices shape our perception and interaction? Niklas Woermann, 2021 Mercator Fellow at the CRC, explores this question in his book Seeing Style.
About the Book
Based on an ethnographic study of the freeskiing subculture, the book develops a theory of phenopractices – embodied practices of the perception and expression of style. By combining approaches from phenomenology, cultural sociology and media research, Woermann provides new impulses on the role of visual order in social practices. An exciting read for anyone concerned with media, practices and cultural perception!
Editoral text:
“How do social practices prefigure experiences, and how does embodied experience organize the performance of practices? This book suggests that the classic concept of style offers a fresh answer to the question how doings and sayings are linked into practice bundles.
Based on a rich ethnographic study of the visual practices of the German-speaking freeskiing subculture, this work develops a theory of phenopractices, or embodied cultural practices dedicated to apprehending and expressing style. Focusing on the visual dimension, it extends the thought of Garfinkel and Schatzki using recent insights from science and technology studies and research at the intersection of neuroscience and phenomenology. This offers a new perspective on fundamental practice-theoretical questions about the nature of practice elements, social order in the context of rules and regularity, or action and practical intelligibility.
Each chapter discusses and develops foundational concepts such as time, space, action, emotion, or perception based on an analysis of freeskiing practices such as planning a route in the backcountry, testing a new ski model, or judging freestyle contests. The central argument is that cultural styles of conduct are not only symbolic structures, but a functional resource which organizes situational intelligibility and thus enables social order based on aligned and managed embodied routines. Because the stabilization, dissemination, and evolution of such styles happens via different media, practice change is primarily influenced by media rather than symbolic, rational, or functional needs or ends.
A rich ethnography and provocative theoretical argument of interest to anyone working on contemporary practice thought, advancing phenomenology, the sociology of vision, lifestyle sports, media, or practice evolution.”
Niklas Woermann is Head of Studies and Associate Professor at the Department of Marketing and Management at SDU Business School at the University of Southern Denmark. He was appointed Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago in 2018 and 2021 Mercator Fellow in the CRC 11877 “Media of Cooperation” at the University of Siegen and is associated with Project B08 – Agentic Media: Formations of Semi-Autonomy. His research focuses how technology shapes consumer experience, services, and interactions. Multidisciplinary in his education, research and outlook, Niklas has published his work in outlets such as the Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Theory and American Behavioural Scientist, as well as key publishers in sociology. Niklas, a distinguished marketing and sociology scholar, served on editorial boards, won the “Outstanding Reviewer Award” at JCR, and reviewed for the ERC. He received the “Sidney J. Levy Award” and a “Swiss National Research Foundation” scholarship.
The “Beiträge zur Praxeologie / Contributions to Praxeology” aim to place practice above all other explanatory variables and to gain, clarify or correct the basic theoretical concepts from this pre-ordering. Both the works of Wittgenstein and those of Schütz and Garfinkel refer to a common Central European genealogy of “praxeology”, which has, however, remained largely unknown to this day. The series therefore aims to develop in three directions: through philosophical theoretical work, through empirical contributions to theory formation and through contributions to the revision of the history of science.
Investigating the interplay of media, data, and language in domestic environments – now available as an open-access volume
von Stephan Habscheid (University of Siegen)/ Tim Hector (University of Siegen)/ Dagmar Hoffmann (University of Siegen)/ David Waldecker (TU Darmstadt) (Eds.)
We are delighted to announce the publication of Voice Assistants in Private Homes: Media, Data, and Language in Interaction and Discourse, an interdisciplinary volume edited by Stephan Habscheid, Tim Hector, Dagmar Hoffmann, and David Waldecker from our CRC. This open-access book provides various contributions regarding voice assistant technologies and their integration into daily life.
The new volume examines voice assistants from different angles, including perspectives of linguistics, sociology, media studies, HCI-research and law, addressing issues such as media and data practices, surveillance, data capitalism, anthropomorphisation, privacy concerns, and the domestication of technology in households. The volume is freely available online through open-access publishing with transcript – you can download the ebook here.
Contributions include analyses of linguistic practices and conceptualisations, studies on capitalist practices and the negotiation of surveillance and privacy as well as reflections on the sociotechnical dynamics of voice assistants. The book also considers broader implications for data ethics and AI development with an outlook on the latest developments in the rise of Large Language Models. The compliation also includes an interview with Nikolai Horn, political advisor on ethical and legal aspects of the digital sphere, dealing with voice assistants and the GDPR.
This publication is essential reading for researchers dealing with human-machine-dialogs, platform technologies, issues of surveillance, privacy and data protection in linguistics, media studies, sociology, and related fields, in particular (but not limited to) those interested in the role of intelligent personal assistants.
The book is part of the Media in Action book series, edited by the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 “Media of Cooperation” at the University of Siegen.
About the researchers
Stephan Habscheid (Prof. Dr.) is a professor of German studies and applied linguistics at Universität Siegen. He is principal investigator of the interdisciplinary project B06 »Un/desired Observation in Interaction: Smart Environments, Language, Body and Senses in Private Homes« at the Collaborative Research Center 1187 »Media of Cooperation«, Universität Siegen (together with Dagmar Hoffmann). His research interests include media linguistics, linguistic praxeology, language in institutions and organizations as well as small talk and conversation. Tim Hector (Dr. des.) works as a research assistant at the Collaborative Research Center 1187 »Media of Cooperation« in the project B06 »Un/desired Observation in Interaction: Smart Environments, Language, Body and Senses in Private Homes« at Universität Siegen. He did a PhD in applied linguistics on the linguistic domestication of voice assistants. His research interests include media and cultural linguistics, conversation analysis linguistic domestication of media technologies and spoken language in human-computer-interaction.
Dagmar Hoffmann (Prof. Dr.) is a professor of media sociology and gender media studies at Universität Siegen, Germany. She is principal investigator in the interdisciplinary project B06 »Un/desired Observation in Interaction: Smart Environments, Language, Body and Senses in Private Homes«« at the Collaborative Research Center 1187 »Media of Cooperation«, Universität Siegen (together with Stephan Habscheid). Her research is focused on media and cultural sociology, digital literacy, and political participation. David Waldecker (Dr.) is a sociologist and an academic librarian in training at Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt. He was a post-doc at the Collaborative Research Center 1187 »Media of Cooperation«, Universität Siegen, and published his dissertation on Adorno in the recording studio in 2022.
About the Media in Action Series
The open access series Media in Action, conceived by the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1187 “Media of Cooperation”, examines the history and present of networked, data-intensive media and their social implications at the interdisciplinary interface of social and media sciences. In the tradition of science and technology studies and actor-network theory, the German and English-language monographs, anthologies and dissertations in the series focus on the practices, (co-)operations and procedures in the use, production and analysis of old and new media. A central challenge facing the series is the development of appropriate ethnographic, digital, sensor-based and design-oriented methods for a new conception of the description of distributed ‘agency’ between people, computers, bodies and environments. The Media in Action Series is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) – project number 262513311 – CRC 1187. The series is edited by Timo Kaerlein, Isabell Otto and Tristan Thielmann.
“The Connectivity of Things: Network Cultures since 1832”
Sebastian Gießmann (University of Siegen)
Translated by Steven Lindberg
Die Verbundenheit der Dinge was first published by Kulturverlag Kadmos Berlin in 2014 (2nd ed. 2016). Sebastian Gießmann was awarded the renowned translation prize for humanities and social science scholars by Geisteswissenschaften International in 2020. The result of Sebastian Gießmann’s completely revised translation has now been published by MIT Press under the title The Connectivity of Things: Network Cultures since 1832.
A media history of the material and infrastructural features of networking practices, a German classic translated for the first time into English.
Nets hold, connect, and catch. They ensnare, bind, and entangle. Our social networks owe their name to a conceivably strange and ambivalent object. But how did the net get into the network? And how can it reasonably represent the connectedness of people, things, institutions, signs, infrastructures, and even nature? The Connectivity of Things by Sebastian Giessmann, the first media history that addresses the overwhelming diversity of networks, attempts to answer all these questions and more.
Reconstructing the decisive moments in which networking turned into a veritable cultural technique, Giessmann takes readers below the street to the Parisian sewers and to the Suez Canal, into the telephone exchanges of Northeast America, and on to the London Underground. His brilliant history explains why social networks were discovered late, how the rapid rise of mathematical network theory was able to take place, how improbable the invention of the internet was, and even what diagrams and conspiracy theories have to do with it all. A primer on networking as a cultural technique, this translated German classic explains everything one ever could wish to know about networks.
Praise
“From fishing nets to the London Tube map, telephones to network protocols, this fascinating book mines diverse historical episodes to highlight the changing materiality, culture, and practices of networks.”
JoAnne Yates, Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management, Emerita, MIT Sloan School of Management
“Behold the much-anticipated history and theory of networks. Giessmann has penned a deeply philosophical and beautifully written media history of how the modern world became so intricately, and perilously, webbed. A triumph!”
Benjamin Peters, Hazel Rogers Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Tulsa; coeditor of Your Computer is on Fire; author of How Not to Network a Nation
“The Connectivity of Things is as expansive and capacious as a network, drawing together technologies and social forms, spatiality and temporality, language and images—an essential text for network historians.”
Nicole Starosielski, Professor, University of California, Berkeley; author of The Undersea Network and Media Hot and Cold
Sebastian Giessmann is Senior Lecturer at the Department for Media Studies at the University of Siegen. He is Principal Investigator of the DFG-funded research project“ „A01 – Digital Network Technologies between Specialization and Generalization“ at the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 –“Media of Cooperation”.
MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design. MIT Press books and journals are known for their intellectual daring, scholarly standards, interdisciplinary focus, and distinctive design.
“Gender and Technology at Work: From Workplace Studies to Social Justice in Design”
Ellen Balka (Simon Fraser University, British Columbia)
Ina Wagner (University of Siegen)
Anne Weibert (University of Siegen)
Volker Wulf (University of Siegen)
The book Gender and Technology at Work: From Workplace Studies to Social Justice in Design was published by Cambridge University Press in April 2024.
The book Gender and Technology at Work: From Workplace Studies to Social Justice in Design, auhtored by our member Volker Wulf (project B04) and his co-authors Ellen Balka, Ina Wagner and Anne Weibert brings together the vast research literature about gender and technology to help designers understand what a gender perspective and a focus on intersectionality can contribute to designing information technology systems and artifacts, and to assist organizations as they work to develop work cultures that are supportive of women and marginalized genders and people. Drawing on empirical and analytical studies of women’s work and technology in many parts of the world, the book addresses how to make invisible aspects of work visible; how to recognize women’s skills without falling into the trap of gender stereotyping; how to engage in improving working conditions; and how to defend care of life situations and needs against a managerial logic.
It addresses challenges for design, including many overlooked and undervalued aspects, such as the complexities involved in human–machine interactions, as well as the need to create safe spaces for research subjects.
- Explores how work in relation to technology is mediated in complex ways by ethnic, cultural, and class backgrounds as well as issues of sexuality
- Presents views about how to build pathways to gender equality in design, addressing wider structural issues that need to be addressed when working towards design justice
- Takes an interdisciplinary approach, including literature from the social sciences, ergonomics, health sciences, computer science, and design disciplines
Reviews & endorsements
“This expansive volume conveys how decades of feminist scholarship on women, work, and technology can inform artifact and system design in ways that promote social justice. It is enriched by the collaboration of a multidisciplinary, multinational team of authors who weave their own stories and those of other feminist technologists into the narrative.”
Carol J. Haddad, Professor Emerita of Technology Studies, Eastern Michigan University
“A captivating deep dive into the intersection of gender, technology, and workplace culture. The authors masterfully integrate extensive research, providing essential guidance for designing user-centric IT systems and promoting inclusive workplaces. A pivotal guide for creating a more equitable tech world.”
Nicola Marsden, Professor of Social Informatics, Heilbronn University, Author of Retaining Women in Tech: Shifting the Paradigm
“This book provides a very welcome and sensitive appraisal of the gender-technology relationship in an ever faster-paced era of change in both domains. It is conceptually comprehensive and politically engaged, restoring authority and agency to those conventionally overlooked and marginalised in technological design processes. A must-read for all those interested in the challenges of achieving social justice in technology design.”
Juliet Webster, Work and Equality Research, London
“Balka, Wagner, Weibert & Wulf’s expertise and established commitment to participatory design (PD) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) provides a rich history of feminist scholarship in gender and technology studies that has shaped this field. Interspersed with interviews from eleven feminist pioneers in PD, CSCW, HCI and STS, they offer provocations, ethical-political perspectives and inspiration for burgeoning intersectional and interdisciplinary research and practice in gender, work and system design, data feminism, critical data studies, and data justice and design justice.”
Leslie Regan Shade, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto
Volker Wulf is Professor at the Institute for Information Systems and New Media at the University of Siegen and is pricipal investigator of the CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation” project “B04 – Digital Publics and Social Transformation in the Maghreb”. Ellen Balka is a Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. Ina Wagner is affiliated to the University of Siegen, Germany after retiring as professor at the Vienna University of Technology, Vienna. Anne Weibert is a research associate at the Institute for Information Systems and New Media at the University of Siegen.
Cambridge University Press is the publishing division of the University of Cambridge, one of the world’s leading research institutions and winner of 81 Nobel Prizes. Cambridge University Press is committed by its charter to disseminate knowledge as widely as possible across the globe. They are publishing academic-level research, reference and higher education textbooks across a wide range of disciplines under the Cambridge University Press imprint.
Power Dynamics and Inequalities within Wikipedia”
Hannah Schmedes (Ruhr University Bochum)
In June 2024, our SFB member Hannah Schmedes (B09) published an article worth reading in the journal FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur 74 (2024) entitled “-1.153 Characters. Towards A Queerfeminist Infrastructural Critique of Wikipedia”, in which she explores the concealed biases, power dynamics, and inequalities within Wikipedia’s infrastructural framework.
Hannah Schmedes is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Media Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum. She is a researcher in the project “B09 – Bicycle Media. Cooperative Media of Mobility” in the DFG-funded CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation”.
FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur analyzes visual representations and discourses in their social and gender-political significance. FKW thus combines art and cultural theory, image and media studies, gender-specific, political and methodological issues to create a critical cultural history of the visual. Questions about constructions in the field of visual culture, about mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, symptomatic subject designs and unreflected objectifications are at the forefront of the critical interest in representation. From a perspective that understands knowledge and understanding as dynamic processes that are always changing, FKW sees itself as a platform for constructive debate and discussion that aims to provide food for thought and critically accompany ways of rethinking.
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