A new era for critique: Towards a criticality turn in studies of media, communication and journalism in the social sciences and the humanities

• Contrary to the idea of post-critique this presentation argues that a new era of criticality is present and still emerging in studies of media, communication and journalism - and more generally in the social sciences and the humanities. Critical practices and analytics are regaining steam and expanding their productive limits – both in academia and in everyday life.The presentation want to move the study and use of critique in academic work from prescribed and closed forms to multiple and open forms, focusing on the variability of critical expressions, here called criticalities. The shortcomings of critical approaches are presented and discussed through the well-known lenses of Bruno Latour (2004) and Rita Felski (2015), but the presentation draw the conclusion that a compositionist approach (Latour 2010) or new vocabularies, affects and moods (Anker and Felski 2017) can fruitfully be seen within a conceptualisation of critique as variability and spectrum of criticality. The presentation is an invitation to consider the relevance of criticality also for the post-critical movement. The notion of critical institutionalism is finally presented (Svensson 2015). Institutions and critique are closely connected (Boltanski 2011) and the role of critique in and for institutional change of media, communication and journalism is touched upon. A call for more studies of how they relate is made, especially in the present situation of impending controversy at many levels of mediated social interaction – from the geopolitical level to the everyday use of social media platforms.References Anker, E. S. and Felski, R. (2017). Introduction in Anker, E. S. and Felski, R. (eds.) Critique and Postcritique, Durham: Duke University Press.Boltanski, L. (2011). On critique: a sociology of emancipation. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Felski, R. (2015). The limits of critique. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Latour, B. (2004). “Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern”. Critical Inquiry, 30, 225–248.Latour, B. (2010). ‘An attempt at an “Compositionist Manifesto”’. New Literary History, 41, no 3, 471-490.Svensson, G. (2015). Att förstå mediekritik. Begreppsliga, empiriska och teoretiska studier av svensk mediekritik 1998-2013. [Understanding media criticism. Conceptual, empirical and theoretical studies of media criticism in Sweden 1998-2013] Uppsala Studies in Media and Communication 8. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet. [Diss.]

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

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