Communication Matters: Materialist Approaches to Media, Mobility and Networks

Communication Mattersis an edited volume that advocates for greater critical attention to the material elements of communication processes in our digital age. It argues against the dominant, traditional assumption that the most important effects of media and communication are mental or virtual. Instead, through exploratory essays by leading scholars in the fields of Communication, Rhetoric, Geography, and English, the book critically engages previous modes of inquiry directly or through analyses of infrastructure, technological interfaces, mobility, time, space, and networks. The book consists of three sections: Communication Time/Space, examines material aspects of space and time as they relate to the digitizing of landscapes and temporality Communication Assemblages/Networks, builds on the work of materialist theorists such as Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Friedrich Kittler, and Bruno Latour to develop new theoretical approaches for apprehending the material aspects of digital networks and technological assemblages Communication Mobility/Immobility, examines the interconnected developments and practices of infrastructure and mobility as they relate to and depend upon communication A general introduction by the editors will situate these various perspectives both in terms of the field of communication and in terms of the emergent "materiality turn" in the humanities and social sciences.