{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title":"Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781911534044","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","uuid":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title":"Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet","normalized_title":"criticaltheoryofcommunicationnewreadingsoflukácsadornomarcusehonnethandhabermasintheageoftheinternet","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781911534044","isbns":["9781911534044","9781911534051","9781911534068","9781911534075"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":236,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Critical%20Theory%20of%20Communication%20New%20Readings%20of%20Luk%C3%A1cs%2C%20Adorno%2C%20Marcuse%2C%20Honneth%20and%20Habermas%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20the%20Internet","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/search"},"page":{"printed_page":194,"pdf_page":198,"physical_index":198,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"53c364f9b511c7f4e30a8fad5e91d896a9ad39ad47a99a7e5f78d84f6d3f713b"},"chapter":"C H R I S T I A N F U C H S CRITICAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATION","content":"6.6.3. Communication and Communications: Practices and Media Systems\n\nIn order to stress the dialectic of structure and agency, Raymond Williams distinguishes between communications (communication systems, means of communication) and communication. Communications are the ‘institutions and forms in which ideas, information, and attitudes are transmitted and received. I mean by communication the process of transmission and reception’ (Williams 1976, 9). He draws a distinction between structures and practices of communication. Such structures that Williams terms communications can also be termed media, information and communication technologies, or means of communication.\n\nThere is no communication without a medium of communication and no medium without communication. A separation between media studies and communication studies is therefore artificial. It is rather an expression of institutional power struggles in the academic world. A medium is a structure that helps humans to organise communication. It conditions, i.e. enables and constrains communication. Even in face-to-face communication there is a medium: the air that transmits light and sound waves so that humans can see and hear each other in a social situation of co-present individuals who communicate at the same time in the same place. There are diferent kinds of media in human communication. Information technologies are the structures or media of communication. They are means of communicative production. The body is a medium of non-verbal communication. Language is a means of textual and verbal communication. Nature is a medium of interpersonal communication (the air as medium for communicating sound and light wave). Socio-technical structures such as computer networks, broadcast technologies, printed paper, etc. are media of socio-technologically mediated communication. Money, power, love, collective beliefs, etc. are symbolically generalised media of communication. Symbolically generalised media are social structures that have the role of sign systems in non-verbal communication. Money, for example, communicates the exchange-value of commodities on markets.\n\nIn the Sociology of Culture, Williams (1995/1981, 88) discerns means of communication that use the human body and those that use non-human material objects. He further subdivides this division and so distinguishes seven means of cultural production (Williams 1995/1981, 89–91): bodily resources (e.g. human speech), the combination of external and bodily resources (e.g. use of masks in theatre performance), performance instruments (e.g. musical instruments), culturally significant objects (e.g. sculptures), material systems of signification (e.g. writing), and complex amplificatory, extending and reproductive technical systems (e.g. television, telephone, radio). In another work, Williams (1989, 174–175) distinguishes between amplifying, storage and instrumentally alternative media (alternatives to bodily resources). Elsewhere he speaks of amplificatory, durative and alternative media (Williams 1980, 55). In a fourth form, humans only make use of the body for verbal and non-verbal communication (Williams 1989, 174; Williams 1980, 54–55).\n\n194\n\nCritical Theory of Communication","previous_page":193,"next_page":195}