The materiality and culture of media technology

In recent years media studies discovered STS to revitalize discussions about the materiality of media as well as empirical research into media practices. In the Anglophone media studies the introduction of STS concepts is part of an overcoming of understanding media as a facilitor of something else (intentions, meanings, power etc) and an alternative approach to context-, content- and effect-oriented approaches. In German speaking media studies it is more a way to rescue media ethnography from its focus on humans, interpretation and 'text' as well as doing media theory without a technological apriori. At the same time STS have recognized that contemporary technology is to a large extent communication and media technology. The interest in rather mundane technologies and the rise of internet and software gave way to a renewed interest in media not only as broadcaster of scientific and technological knowledge, but to understand scientific and technological practices as mediation and to understand media technology in its distributed material agency. Further in particular digital media are used to learn from for doing social and cultural research. In my talk I discuss these encounters between STS and media studies and aim to illustrate these with examples taken from research into television audience ratings. Such an approach can illuminate the affects, performativity and politics of media technology in more depth.